Vayakheil: Darker Than a Tent

ohel (אֹהֶל) = tent; an easily dismantled dwelling for nomads and/or shepherds.

ohel mo-eid (אֺהֶל מוֹעֵד) = Tent of Meeting, Tent of Appointment. Most often, the temporary structure that God inhabits in the center of the Israelite camp from Mount Sinai to Shiloh in Canaan.¹

tent = “a collapsible shelter of fabric (such as nylon or canvas) stretched and sustained by poles and used for camping outdoors or as a temporary building” (Merriam Webster 2026)

For years I assumed that the ohel mo-eid was a ancient version of the tent we erect today for a special event outdoors—a framework of metal poles covered with white plasticized cloth, sometimes with clear plastic windows, and an opening at one end. We bring folding chairs into these tents, and maybe folding tables or a portable stage with a sound system, the cords snaking out under the bottom of the tent fabric. For a nighttime event we add electric lights, but by day plenty of light comes through the white roof and walls.

The framework of the ohel mo-eid was made with well-spaced timber studs, I used to think, and fabric was draped over this framework inside and out. Then two layers of leather were added to the roof for waterproofing. So no light would come through the ceiling, but light would filter through the goat-hair fabric outside walls and the tapestry inside walls.

I almost had it right. But this year I looked at the measurements, and discovered my mistake.

The box

This week’s Torah reading combines the last two portions in the book of Exodus, Vayakheil (Exodus/Shemot 35:1-38:20) and Pekudei (Exodus 38:21-40:38), in which the Israelites craft and assemble the ohel mo-eid as a dwelling-place for God. The description of the process is almost identical with the instructions God gave to Moshe (“Moses” in English) earlier in Exodus, in the portion Terumah, and no easier to follow. The Torah describes the measurements and the materials of the constituent parts, but only vaguely indicates how they are put together. So first let me describe the ohel mo-eid when it is already assembled.

Imagine a box 10 cubits wide,10 cubits high, and 30 cubits long. (10 cubits is roughly 15 feet or 3.3 meters.) The long walls face north and south; the short walls face east and west. This structure, about as big as a one-bedroom apartment with very high ceilings, is made out of boards of acacia wood. A giant cloth is draped over the outside of the box, covering the top and hanging down over the walls on three sides. The front end consist of five wood pillars and a curtain.

To make the giant cloth covering, Israelite women weave eleven lengths of fabric out of undyed goat hair, each one 30 cubits long by 4 cubits wide. (Four cubits was the standard width of an Egyptian loom.) They fasten these together into a single rectangle that measures 30 by 44 cubits.

After the goat-hair cloth has been draped over the wood structure, two layers of leather are laid across the roof.²

Inside, the structure is divided into two rooms by a colorful curtain hanging from the ceiling. The back room, the Holy of Holies, is 10 cubits square, and contains only the gold-plated ark—and God’s manifestation above the ark, in the space between the two gold sculptures that rise at either end of the lid.³ The front room is 20 cubits by 10 cubits, and contains the lampstand (menorah), the bread table, and the incense altar.⁴

The inside is what counts

The description of making the ohel mo-eid in the portion Vayakheil this week begins, like God’s instructions in the earlier portion Terumah, with the inside tapestry, not with the supporting wooden structure.

Then everyone wise of mind among the makers of the work made the mishkan. Of ten cloths of twisted fine linen and blue and red-violet and scarlet [wool], in a design of keruvim they made them.⁵ (Exodus 36:8)

mishkan (מִשְׁכָּן) = dwelling-place (usually God’s dwelling place, “tabernacle” in English).

keruvim (כְּרֻבִים) = hybrid beasts with wings and human faces.

Each of the ten tapestries is 28 cubits long by 4 cubits wide (about 42 feet by 6 feet, or 12.8 by 2 meters). Five cloths are sewn together into one large hanging measuring 28 cubits by 20 cubits, and the other five cloths are sewn into a similar hanging. Loops of blue yarn were sewn down one edge of each large hanging.

Then they made fifty clasps of gold, and they joined the hangings to one another with the clasps. And the mishkan became one piece. (Exodus 36:13)

Apparently what counts as God’s mishkan is the space defined by the interior tapestries hanging over a packed-earth floor. A wooden structure is required to hold up the tapestries, and the completed “tent” will have other material draped over the exterior. But the beautiful tapestries define God’s dwelling-place. Appearances matter.

Wooden walls

The middle 10 cubits of the combined tapestry makes the cloth ceiling of the mishkan. That leaves 9 cubits of tapestry hanging down on each side, in front of the long north and south wooden walls. At the back end, the leftover tapestry hangs down in front of the west wall. (The folds of fabric that would naturally form at the right-angle corners in back are not mentioned in the Torah.)

Between the bottom of the tapestry and the packed-earth floor, there is a gap of one cubit—about 18 inches. So a priest would see about 18 inches of the wooden framework at the bottom of the wall. (On the outside, the large goat-hair covering would come down to the ground.)

What does the wooden part of the ohel mo-eid look like?

And they made the planks for the mishkan of acacia wood, standing upright: ten cubits the length of the plank, and one and a half cubits the width of each plank. Two pegs for each plank, parallel one to one; thus they did for all the planks of the mishkan. (Exodus 36:20-22)

Each plank is a cubit and a half wide—about 27 inches. Two pegs (or tenons) come out of the bottom end of each plank.

And they made the planks for the mishkan: 20 planks for the Negev side, to the south. (Exodus 36:23)

Imagine 20 boards standing upright, each board a cubit and a half wide. If each plank touches its neighbors, it would make a continuous wall 30 cubits long—the exact length of the mishkan’s interior. Therefore (I realized this year) there are no gaps between the planks.

And they made 40 silver adanim underneath the 20 planks, two adanim under each plank for its two pegs, and two adanim under each [other] plank for its two pegs. (Exodus 36:24)

adanim (אֲדָנִים) = sockets; pedestals.

The two pegs (tenons) at the bottom of each plank fit into two sockets (mortises) in the base under the wall. Probably the base consists of a row of pedestals with sockets carved into them.

The long northern wall is the same as the southern wall. The short western wall in the back, behind the ark, is also continuous wood planking: six regular planks and two corner-posts.

Next the Torah describes how the planks are secured at the top.

And they made running-bars of acacia wood, five running-bars for the planks on one side of the mishkan, and five running-bars for the planks on the second side of the mishkan, and five running-bars for the planks of the mishkan at the rear, toward the sea. And they made a middle running-bar, to run amidst the planks from end to end. (Exodus 36:31-33)

We never learn where all these running-bars are positioned. Perhaps running-bars along the tops of the wooden walls hold up the ceiling section of the tapestry.

Only after this obscure description do we find out that the bars are attached to the planks with gold rings.

And they overlaid the planks with gold, and they made rings of gold as receptacles for the running-bars, and thy overlaid the running-bars with gold. (Exodus 36:34)

Maybe all the running-bars are visible, pinning the tapestry close to the wooden wall. That would explain why they are overlaid with gold. But it seems wasteful to apply gold leaf to the entire surface of each plank, instead of just the bottom end visible under the tapestry.

Next the Torah portion describes the colorful curtain that will separate the mishkan into two rooms, with the Holy of Holies in back. This curtain is framed by four pillars of gold-covered acacia wood, each on its own silver pedestal.

Last comes the description of the front of the structure, facing east.

Then they made a screen for the entrance of the ohel, of blue, red-violet, scarlet, and white linen: the making of an embroiderer. And they overlaid their five pillars and their clasps and their binding-rings with gold, and their five adanim with copper. (Exodus 36:37-38)

Low lighting

No natural light can filter through the roof of the ohel mo-eid, since it is covered with leather. And no natural light can penetrate the solid wood walls on three sides of the building; at best, there might be thin cracks of light at the bottom, between pedestals. Daylight would only filter through the embroidered screen covering the front entrance.

Unlike a portable party tent today, the ohel mo-eid would be dim, even dark, inside during the day.

There are no electric lights, of course, but the priests must light the seven oil lamps of the menorah every sunset, and let them burn until sunrise.⁶ Since the front room is 20 cubits or 30 feet long, the back corners of the room would remain in shadow.

Furthermore, the smoke from the incense the high priest burns inside the mishkan would rise toward the ceiling, which has no hole or chimney. When the Israelites camp in the same place for days, the mishkan would fill up with smoke. All of its gold furnishings and colorful tapestry could only be glimpsed through the dim and smoky light.

The interior of the ohel mo-eid is designed to please God, so that God will be content to dwell there. The only human beings who see the inside of the mishkan are the priests: Aharon (“Aaron” in English) and his sons, and eventually his grandsons. They need to be reminded that their duties inside the sacred space are holy, and must be taken very seriously.⁷ Seeing the golden furnishings and the elaborate tapestries and the curtain hiding the ark in dim light, through the smoke of incense, would add to the feeling of mystery.⁸

But all the Israelites can see the exterior of the ohel mo-eid. On three sides they see only goat-hair cloth, unornamented. In front, behind the outdoor altar, they see the entrance: a fabric screen, elaborately embroidered in vivid blue, red-violet, and scarlet. This is enough to indicate that something royal and amazing is inside, enough so that they can believe God dwells there.

I think that if the entire tent, including the entrance, were covered with nothing but undyed goat-hair, it would be harder to summon the feeling of God’s presence. Personally, I feel uplifted in a forest, or in a gothic cathedral (as long as I igore the statues representing a religion that is not my own). If I attend a Jewish service in a room with no more glamor than a high school cafeteria, I try to avoid looking up from my prayerbook. A view of a large, colorful embroidery would help a lot, with or without keruvim.

Appearance matters.

For exceptions see last week’s post, Ki Tisa: Meeting Outside the Camp.
See my post Terumah: Under Cover.
See my post Terumah: Cherubs Are Not for Valentine’s Day.
See my posts Terumah: Bread of Faces, Terumah: Tree of Light, and Terumah: Wood Inside.
In Exodus 36:8-36:37 the text literally says “he made” (asah, אָשָׂה) when it means “they made”, and says “and he made” (vaya-as, וַיַּאַשׂ) when it means “and they made”—perhaps because Moshe is ultimately responsible for everyone’s work, or perhaps due to scribal carelessness.
Exodus 27:20-21, Leviticus 21:3-4.
See my post Shemini: Follow the Rules.
When it is time to break camp, dismantle the ohel mo-eid, and journey on, the priests must cover the ark, menorah, bread table, and incense altar first, in the dim light. See my post Bemidbar: Don’t Look.

Ki Tisa: Meeting Outside the Camp

Following God’s pillar of cloud by day and fire by night gets the Israelites from Egypt to Mount Sinai. But then the divine pillar disappears, and God terrifies the people with an earth-shaking, volcanic, deafening revelation. God dictates dozens of laws that to Moshe (“Moses” in English), and the Israelites all agree to do whatever God says.

Altar and high priest, from Treasures of the Bible, Northrop, 1894

Moshe climbs Mount Sinai and spends 40 days in the cloud at the top, listening to God’s instructions for a new, centralized religion. Previously, families burned their own offerings to God at their own stone altars. Now there will be a single bronze altar in front of a richly furnished sanctuary. Only consecrated priests are allowed to officiate at the altar or enter the sanctuary, which will be erected in the center of the camp.

The Torah portions Terumah and Tetzaveh consist entirely of directions for the sanctuary and its furnishings, and the priests’ vestments. The directions continue in the first part of this week’s portion, Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11-34:35).

By the fortieth day, the Israelites despair of ever seeing Moshe or God’s pillar of cloud again. So they make a golden calf to lead them to Canaan. When Moshe comes back down the mountain with the pair of stone tablets, he sees them carousing in front of their new idol. He smashes the tablets, grinds the idol into gold dust, adds water, and makes the people drink it. Then he orders the men of his own tribe, the Levites, to go through the camp and kill the offenders—about 3,000 people. (See my post Ki Tisa: Golden Calf, Stone Commandments.)

The next day, Moshe tries to get God to issue a blanket pardon for the surviving Israelites, but God sends a plague that kills more people. (See my post Ki Tisa: Seeking a Pardon.) Then he gives the survivors some bad news.

The plan changes

In the portion Terumah, God had begun his instructions for the sanctuary by telling Moshe:

“Then let them make for me a holy place, and I will dwell betocham.” (Exodus 25:8)

betocham (בְּתוֹכָם) = among them, in their midst.

This holy place or sanctuary (or “tabernacle” in English) is subsequently called God’s mishkan (מִשְׁכָּן = dwelling place) or God’s ohel mo-eid (אֺהֶל מוֹעֵד) = Tent of Meeting, Tent of Appointment. (See last week’s post, Tetzaveh: Meeting Place.)

But after the golden calf worship in this week’s Torah portion, God declares that a divine messenger will go ahead of the Israelites to Canaan, and drive out the native inhabitants—

“But I will not go up in your midst, since you are a stiff-necked people,¹ lest I finish you off on the way!” And the people heard this bad news, and they mourned, and no man put on his ornaments. (Exodus 33:3-4)

Hirsch wrote: “We see how deeply they felt about their spiritual calling and how deep-seated was their consciousness of it.”²

I think their need to believe that God is in their midst is not so much a “spiritual calling” as desperation—the desperation of people who have spent their whole lives enslaved in Egypt, and now find themselves in an alien wilderness, on their way to an unknown place. It helps to have Moshe back with them, but they know it is God who leads them and provides manna and water. Moshe still has not told the Israelites about God’s directions for centralized religious worship. As long as God refuses to go in their midst, there is no point in making an ohel mo-eid for God to dwell in.

A temporary Tent of Meeting

Then Moshe took³ the ohel and pitched it for himself outside the camp, putting it far away from the camp. And he called it the ohel mo-eid, and it happened: anyone seeking God was going out to the ohel mo-eid that was outside the camp. (Exodus 33:7)

ohel (אֺהֶל) = tent: either a tent for humans, or the ohel mo-eid for God.

The text does not say which tent Moshe pitches outside the camp, but it is not the elaborate ohel mo-eid that God originally planned. The classic commentary assumes that “the ohel” is Moshe’s own tent.

And in the 20^th century, Cassuto explained: “It was impossible for him to seclude himself with the Divine Presence in the Camp of Israel because the camp had been defiled by the sin of idolatry, so that God did not want to have His Divine Presence rest there. Hence Moshe took his tent and planted it outside the camp to serve him as a meeting place between himself and God.”⁴

But Steinsaltz wrote: “Moses continued to sleep in his family tent inside the camp. Every day he would leave that tent and pass through the camp to the Tent of Meeting outside.”⁵

In the rest of the Torah, “outside the camp” means either a ritually pure ash-heap where specific parts of certain sacrificial animals are burned;⁶ or an impure area where people with the skin disease tzara-at must live,⁷ where pieces of a moldy house are dumped,⁸ and where people are stoned to death after being sentenced for blaspheming God or Shabbat.⁹ But thanks to the golden calf worship, the camp itself is impure at this point in the story. The Israelites are used to “seeking God” in the camp by asking to Moshe to speak to God or tell them what God says. Now they have to walk to a tent outside the camp.

Deference

And it used to be when Moshe was going out to the Tent, all the people would rise; and they stationed themselves, each man at the entrance of his tent, and they gazed after Moshe until he entered the Tent. (Exodus 33:8)

Rising in someone’s presence is a way of honoring them, in the Torah and to this day. I imagine the Israelites gazing after Moshe with longing, feeling like outcasts because their leader has to leave them in order to speak with God.

Pillar of Cloud, by Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, 1731

And it used to be when Moshe came into the tent, the pillar of cloud came down and stood at the entrance of the Tent, and [God] spoke with Moshe. And all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the Tent, and all the people rose and prostrated themselves, each man at the entrance of his tent. (Exodus 33:9-10)

This is the first time God’s pillar of cloud has appeared since the Israelites arrived at Mount Sinai. Now it shows up in front of the temporary Tent of Meeting every time Moshe goes inside, but the people cannot follow it. All they can do is prostrate themselves, bowing and flattening themselves on the ground in the accepted gesture for honoring a king or a god.

Cassuto wrote: “That is a sign that they were suffused with a spirit of repentance and complete faith in the Lord, their God, and His servant, Moshe. … because of this inclination towards repentance of theirs, the Children of Israel merited complete forgiveness …”¹⁰

Two men in the Tent

The narrative about the temporary Tent of Meeting concludes with a verse about both Moshe and Yehoshua (“Joshua” in English).

And God used to speak to Moshe face-to-face, as a man speaks to his fellow. Then he returned to the camp, but his personal attendant,¹¹ Yehoshua son of Nun, did not depart from within the Tent. (Exodus 33:11)

Moshe goes back into the camp periodically—perhaps to report what God says, perhaps to eat and sleep in his own family’s tent in camp, perhaps even to fetch food and water for his attendant Yehoshua, who lives inside the temporary Tent of Meeting full-time.

According to Sforno, Yehoshua stays there “in order to ensure that none of the Israelites would enter this tent, seeing all of them were in a state of disgrace”.¹²

If any of the refractory people whom God wants to avoid tried to enter the temporary ohel mo-eid, then God would boycott the tent, and Moshe could no longer talk with God there. But God does not object to Yehoshua’s presence in the Tent. Yehoshua was not even in camp when the Israelites worshiped the golden calf. He waited alone near the foot of the mountain until Moshe returned with the stone tablets.

Still, according to Hirsch: “To him, the pillar of cloud did not descend. Only when Moshe entered the tent did the pillar of cloud descend and stand at the entrance of the tent.”¹³

Two Tents of Meeting

Thus the story of the ohel mo-eid outside the camp can be explained as a natural interlude in the Torah portion Ki Tisa. Of course Moshe would erect a temporary Tent of Meeting after the golden calf fiasco, so he can continue to converse with God without climbing Mount Sinai. Then when he thinks God’s anger might have faded, he begs God to go in the midst of the Israelites after all, and God agrees.¹⁴

Moshe climbs the mountain one more time and returns with a second pair of stone tablets. Then the Israelites proceed to make the official ohel mo-eid according to God’s instructions, and pitch it in the center of their camp. Once it is complete, there will be no more need for a temporary ohel mo-eid.

Yet an ohel mo-eid outside the camp shows up again in the portion Beha-alotkha in the book of Numbers and in the portion Vayeilekh in Deuteronomy.

When Moshe complains that he cannot handle the Israelites all by himself, God says:

“Gather for me 70 men from the elders of Israel … and take them to the ohel mo-eid, and station them there with you. And I will draw from the spirit that is upon you, and place it upon them Then they will carry the burden of the people with you …” (Numbers 11:16-17)

After the elders have received the spirit of prophecy,

Then Moshe took himself back to the camp, he and the elders of Israel. (Numbers 11:30)

Obviously Moshe and the elders stand in front of an ohel mo-eid outside the camp, and then Moshe leads them back to the camp where the ohel mo-eid of the priests is.

Later in the same Torah portion, after Miriam and Aharon (“Aaron” in English) complain about their younger brother Moshe, God commands:

“Go, the three of you, to the ohel mo-eid!” And the three of them went. And God came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance of the ohel … (Numbers 12:4-5)

Just like in the portion Ki Tisa, God shows up as pillar of cloud at the entrance of the tent, not as a mysterious manifestation above the ark inside the Holy of Holies, the back chamber of the priests’ ohel mo-eid. The same thing happens in the portion Vayeilekh in Deuteronomy, when God commands Moshe:

“Call Yehoshua, and station yourselves at the ohel mo-eid, and I will give him orders.” And Moshe went, and Yehoshua, and they stationed themselves at the ohel mo-eid. And God appeared at the ohel in a pillar of cloud, and the pillar of cloud stood over the entrance of the ohel.” (Deuteronomy 31:14-15)

Moshe is a Levite, but Yehoshua (“Joshua”) is from the tribe of Efrayim, and would not be allowed to even approach the entrance of the ohel mo-eid in the middle of the camp. In Ki Tisa, Yehoshua merely guards the Tent of Meeting, but in Deuteronomy Moshe is near the end of his life and Yehoshua is slated to lead the conquest of Canaan. So God speaks to both of them from the pillar of cloud.

All three of these stories take place after the Israelites have finished making the priests’ ohel mo-eid and journeyed north from Mount Sinai. The Torah offers no explanation of why there is still an ohel mo-eid outside the camp in these stories.

Modern source scholars agree that the brief scene in Ki Tisa about a Tent of Meeting outside the camp is an interruption in the account that comes from the “P source”, written by priests in the 6^th century B.C.E. or later. The P source is invested in a system of worship conducted by priests at a central location. The Tent of Meeting in the middle of the camp stands in for the temple in Jerusalem. In both places, God dwells deep inside where no one can see, and the priests run the show.

The source that refers to an ohel mo-eid outside the camp in this week’s portion and the three stories in later books offers an alternative. Anyone can see God manifest as a pillar of cloud in front of the Tent of Meeting outside the camp. And God speaks from that cloud not only to a priest, Aharon, but also to two prophets, Moshe and Miriam, and to the man who is variously a personal servant, a general, and a chieftain: Yehoshua.

According to Jeon, “The non-Priestly Ohel Moed layer is marked by its focus on a new authority and leadership structure, especially in a struggle with a priestly group. This fits the social and political circumstances of the kingless, postexilic period [after 538 B.C.E.], in which various social and religious groups struggled with each other over different ideas of the community’s restoration, in particular about its leadership.”¹⁵

Regardless of any political agendas after the 6^th century B.C.E., the two different Tents of Meeting in the portion Ki Tisa present a contrast between formal public worship conducted by specialists at a central location, and the option of personal meetings with God outside.

Personally, I wish I could join public worship more often. Singing with a whole congregation lifts my soul, and repeating ancient prayers and rituals puts me in a meditative space. For me, a personal meeting with God—in other words, a numinous experience—is unforgettable, but rare. I am not a Miriam, Aharon, or Yehoshua. But the more ordinary sense of awe I feel when I walk through a forest also reminds me of God.

So I am glad that the Torah hints at a two-tent solution.

See my post Ki Tisa: Stiff-Necked People.
19^th-century rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 783.
The verb yikach (יִקַּח) is in the imperfect, so it would normally be translated as “he will take”, but that makes no sense in this context.
Rabbi Moshe David Cassuto (1883-1951), translation in www.sefaria.org.
21^st-century rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Steinsaltz Tanakh, Koren Publishers, electronic edition in www.sefaria.org.
Exodus 29:14; Leviticus 4:12, 4:21, 6:4, 8:17, 9:11, 16:27; Numbers 19:3.
Leviticus 13:46; Numbers 12:14.
Leviticus 14:40-45.
Leviticus 24:14, 24:23; Numbers 15:35-36. The bodies of Nadav and Avihu, whom God killed after a sacrilege, must be dragged outside the camp in Leviticus 10:4.
Cassuto, ibid.
The text refers to Yehoshua (“Joshua” in English) as na-ar (נַעַר) = boy, young man, unmarried man, manservant. Many commentators have counted the years backward from when Yehoshua dies at age 110 to show that he is in his mid-50’s at Mount Sinai, hardly a young man. 14^th-century rabbi Bachya ben Asher explained that Yehoshua is Moshe’s “personal valet”.
16^th-century rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Hirsch, p. 787.
Exodus 33:12-17.
Jaeyoung Jeon, “The Non-Priestly Ohel Moed”, https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-non-priestly-ohel-moed.

Tetzaveh: Meeting Place

Moshe (“Moses” in English) spends his first 40-day stint on top of Mount Sinai listening to God’s instructions for reforming the Israelite system of worship by means of a portable sanctuary and priests only from the tribe of Levi. In last week’s Torah portion, Terumah, God says:

“Then let them make for me a mikdash, and I will dwell among them. Like all that I myself show you, the pattern of the mishkan and the pattern of all its furnishings, thus you should make it.” (Exodus 25:8-9)

mikdash (מִקְדָּשׁ) = holy place, sanctuary. (From the same root as kadosh, קָדוֹשׁ = holy.)

mishkan (מִשְׁכָּן) = dwelling place, home. (From the root verb shakhan, שָׁכַן = dwell, settle, stay, inhabit. The mishkan of God is often called a “tabernacle” in English.)

The Tabernacle in the Camp, Collectie Nederland

Then God describes the mishkan and most of the holy items associated with it.¹ In this week’s Torah portion, Tetzaveh (Exodus/Shemot 27:20-30:10), God describes the vestments for the new priests and the ritual for ordaining them.²

This Torah portion also contains the first reference to the ohel mo-eid, the “Tent of Meeting” or “Tent of Appointment”:

“And you shall command the Israelites, and they will fetch you clear, beaten olive oil for the illumination, to bring up the lamp regularly in the ohel mo-eid, outside the dividing curtain that is in front of the testimony; Aharon and his sons shall arrange it from evening until morning in front of God …” (Exodus 27:20-21)

ohel (אֹהֶל) = tent, home that nomads can dismantle and reconstruct.

mo-eid (מוֹעֵד) = meeting, meeting place, appointed time, appointment. (From the root verb ya-ad, יָעַד = appointed, designated, met by appointment.)

This lamp is the seven-branched menorah (lampstand) in the front chamber of the mishkan.³ Moshe’s brother Aharon (“Aaron” in English) and Aharon’s four sons will be ordained as the revised religion’s first priests. Before this week’s portion, Tetzaveh, the word mo-eid is used only for appointment times, not places.⁴ But the ohel mo-eid is a place, a structure with a tent roof; a place which God appoints for some of the daily duties of the priests, and a place for God’s own “meeting” with the whole congregation.

An appointed place

After the brief reference to olive oil for the menorah, God describes the new priests’ vestments, from turbans to underpants.

“And you will make for them linen underpants to cover naked flesh; they will be from the hips to the thighs. And they must be upon Aharon and upon his sons whenever they come into the ohel mo-eid, or whenever they approach the altar to minister to the holy; then they will not bear iniquity and die …” (Exodus 28:43)

The ohel mo-eid is the mishkan, and the altar will stand in the courtyard in front of the mishkan. It is not clear whether the priests must wear all their vestments in these two holy spaces, or if they must merely wear their linen underpants under whatever robes or tunics they choose.

One of the first laws that God gave Moshe after the Ten Commandments was:

“And you must not climb up to my altar by ascending stairs, so that your nakedness will not be revealed upon it.” (Exodus 20:23)

Avoiding an altar with stairs is one way to avoid exposing one’s genitals when engaged in an act of worship. Wearing a long robe is not sufficient, since even if the people below cannot see a man’s private parts, it is forbidden to expose that part of their anatomy to even the floor or stairs of a holy place. The portion Terumah provides another way to avoid exposure: underpants.

On the other hand, the majority opinion in the Talmud is that a priest must be wearing all of his vestments, not the just underpants, when he is in the ohel mo-eid or its front courtyard. The reason, according to the Talmud, is that a man only counts as a priest when he is wearing the sacred vestments, and any non-priest officiating at the temple must be executed.⁵

Next God tells Moshe the ritual for ordaining the priests. First Moshe must bring a bull and two rams, three kinds of bread, and the new vestments to the altar.

“Then you shall bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the ohel mo-eid and you shall wash them in water.” (Exodus 29:4)

Both the basin for the priests’ ritual washing and the altar for burnt offerings are located outside the Tent of Meeting, in front of its entrance.

Then Moshe will dress Aharon in all his vestments, including the additional sacred items of the high priest: a long blue robe with bells around the hem, a tabard with a breast-piece containing twelve gems for the twelve tribes and a pocket containing two divining devices, and a medallion to wear on his forehead over his turban.⁶ After that Moshe will dress Aharon’s four sons in the vestments that all priests wear: turbans, long tunics, and sashes. (The Torah does not say whether they put on their own underpants.)

“Then you shall bring the bull to the front of the ohel mo-eid, and Aharon and his sons shall lean their hands on the head of the bull. And you shall slaughter the bull in front of God, at the entrance of the ohel mo-eid.” (Exodus 29:10-11)

After calling for the ritual slaughtering of the bull and anointing of the altar and the new priests with its blood, God utters an aside about the high priest’s vestments.

And the holy garments that are Aharon’s will become his sons’ after him … For seven days the priest replacing him among his sons will wear them—the one who comes into the ohel mo-eid to minister at the holy place. (Exodus 29:30)

Now the high priest is defined not only by his special vestments, but also as the one who serves inside the ohel mo-eid. (Although other priests are allowed inside the front room of the ohel mo-eid, only the high priest may light the lamps and the incense altar there.)

Returning to the ordination ceremony, God says that Aharon and his sons must spend seven days eating bread and the meat of the ordination ram—

“—at the entrance of the ohel mo-eid.” (Exodus 29:32) They will not be allowed inside until the eighth day, after they have spent seven days at the threshold.

A meeting place

Then God tells Moshe what offerings should be made on the new altar on ordinary days (not on Shabbat or other holy days, which require more slaughtered animals). On ordinary days, God wants one yearling lamb every morning and one every evening, each lamb accompanied by flour with oil stirred into it, and a libation of wine. This will be:

“… a perpetual completely-burned offering throughout your generations, at the entrance of the ohel mo-eid in front of God. There iva-eid with you [plural], to speak to you [singular] there.” (Exodus 29:42)

iva-eid (אִוָּעֵד) = I will meet by appointment, I meet by appointment. (An imperfect form of the verb ya-ad, which is also the root of mo-eid.)

The Hebrew Bible sometimes switches randomly between the second-person singular and the second-person plural. But the next verse confirms that God will meet more than one person in front of the ohel mo-eid.

“Veno-adeti there with the Israelites, and it will be made holy by my glory. And I will make holy the ohel mo-eid and the altar; and Aharon and his sons I will make holy, to be my priests.” (Exodus 29:43-44)

veno-adeti (וְנֺעַדְתִּי) = and I will meet by appointment. (A vav consecutive perfect form of the verb ya-ad.)

In other words, God will “meet” the Israelites at designated times in the courtyard in front of the ohel mo-eid—the Tent of Meeting or Tent of Appointment. The Israelites will bring offerings, the priests will place them on the altar fire, and God will be there to appreciate them. Additionally, God will continue to speak to Moshe in front of that tent, among other places.

The altar is made holy by God’s glory (kavod, כָּבוֹד) only once, when the ritual prescribed in the Exodus portion Terumah is performed in the Leviticus portion Shemini. In Leviticus 9:23-24, God sends fire out from inside the mishkan to land on the new altar and finish consecrating it.

The rest of the time God’s glory is either located inside the mishkan, or appears as a cloud or fire—the same one that is shrouding Moshe at the top of Mount Sinai.⁷ In the future God’s glory, manifest as a cloud by day and fire by night, will hang above the mishkan or ohel mo-eid when the Israelites are camped, and lead the way to the next campsite when they are on the road.⁸

The expression ohel mo-eid appears 137 times in the books of Exodus through Deuteronomy, and usually—but not always—refers to God’s mishkan. The next Torah portion in Exodus, Ki Tisa, includes a strange passage in which there is an ohel mo-eid before anyone has started to build the mishkan—and Moshe, at least, meets God there.

Of course, the Tent of Meeting in the book of Exodus is a good precursor for the temple in Jerusalem; anyone reading or hearing Exodus during temple times would probably feel reassured that God had requested a similar place of worship long ago.

Although some people, in the Hebrew Bible and today, encounter manifestations of God at odd moments in random places, meeting God is more likely in a place of worship. I have found that coming to a synagogue and singing prayers with other Jews makes it more likely that I will feel the touch of holiness—that I will come closer to meeting God.

See my posts Terumah: Contributing, Terumah: Wood Inside, Terumah: Tree of Light, Terumah: Under Cover, Terumah: Bread of Faces, Terumah: Heavy Metals, and Terumah: Cherubs Are Not for Valentine’s Day.
See my posts Tetzaveh: Clothed in Three Reminders and a Warning, Tetzaveh: Flower on the Forehead, and Tetzaveh: The Clothes Make the Man.
For more on the menorah, see my post Terumah: Tree of Light.
Genesis 1:14, 17:21, 18:14, 21:2; and Exodus 9:5, 13:10, and 23:15.
Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin 83b.
See my post Tetzaveh: Clothed in Three Reminders and a Warning.
Exodus 24:15-18.
Exodus 40:34-38.

Terumah: Contributing

Before giving Moshe (“Moses” in English) the first pair of stone tablets at the summit of Mount Sinai, God gives him instructions for founding a new religion, featuring priests and a portable tent-sanctuary. The instructions begin with this week’s Torah portion, Terumah (Exodus/Shemot 25:1-2:19), which opens:

And God spoke to Moshe, saying: “Speak to the Israelites, and they must take for me a terumah; from every man whose heart urges him on, you will take my terumah.” (Exodus 25:1-2)

terumah (תְּרוּמָה) = voluntary contribution lifted up and offered to God. (From the root verb rum, רוּם = to be high, to be exalted.)

In other words, God is inviting people to make gifts because they want to. A list of materials to contribute follows, but no contributions are mandated. Furthermore, according to Chayim ibn Attar: “… a person should not make a contribution until he was in the proper frame of mind. … The Torah also may wish to teach that the term ‘my gift,’ cannot be used except when the donor has donated it willingly, generously, with all his heart.”¹

Proposed gifts

All the materials that God requests (or proposes) will be used to fashion a portable sanctuary and its implements, and to make vestments for the priests of the new religion. Gold, silver, and four kinds of yarn (blue, red-violet, and scarlet wool, and bleached linen) are needed for both the sanctuary and the vestments. Acacia wood is needed for the framework of the sanctuary and its courtyard, and for the walls of the sanctuary (which will be covered with fabric inside and out). Goat’s hair yarn and two kinds of leather are needed for the three roof coverings to be draped over a wood framework. Copper (or brass or bronze) is needed for the altar and the wash-basin outside the sanctuary, and for clasps and sockets in the areas that do not require silver. Precious stones will be sewn onto the high priest’s vestments, incense spices are needed for one of the high priest’s duties, and olive oil is needed for inaugurating priests.

Why do the Israelites have all these materials? Harold Kushner pointed out: “The gold, silver, and jewels that the Israelites would give were taken from the Egyptians when they left Egypt. They were not to be used for personal benefit but for something holy and transcendant.”²

The Israelites also “borrowed” clothing from their Egyptian neighbors, which might have contained the woolen yarn colored with expensive dyes, and the linen threads. The Israelite women already had copper mirrors, and presumably copper pans, spices, and olive oil that they packed them for the journey.

Yet no matter where the materials came from, they are all made from things that God (as the creator of nature) originally provided. Considering this, many Israelites might feel moved to give something back to God. And the act of giving is in itself beneficial. Jonathan Sacks wrote: “To be in a situation where you can only receive, not give, is to lack human dignity.”³

A small space

After listing the materials to be donated, God tells Moshe:

“Then let them make me a holy-place, and veshakhanti among them. Like all that I myself show you, the pattern of the mishkan and the pattern of all its furnishings, thus you should make it.” (Exodus 25:8-9)

veshakhanti (וְשָׁכַנְתִּי) = and I will dwell, and I will settle. (From the verb shakhan, שָׁכַן = dwell, settle, stay, inhabit.)

mishkan (מִשְׁכָּן) = dwelling place, home. (From the root verb shakhan. Out of 137 occurrences of the word mishkan in the Hebrew Bible, only 12 refer to human rather than divine dwelling places.⁴ The mishkan of God is often called a “tabernacle” in English.)

If they build it, God will come. But how could God live in a structure that will be, according to God’s subsequent instructions, only 10 x 20 cubits (about 15 x 30 feet or 4½ x 9 meters)?

Many classic commentators pointed out that God is too vast to fit inside. They cited biblical passages such as: “Behold, the heavens and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You” (I Kings 8:27); “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” (Jeremiah 23:24); and “The heavens are My throne, and the earth is My footstool” (Isaiah 66:1).

In the 14^th century Bachya ben Asher explained that only God’s kavod (כָּבוֹד = glory, magnificence, impressiveness) would dwell inside the mishkan. God’s kavod previously appeared as a pillar of cloud and fire, then as the cloud and fire on Mount Sinai. Now it would manifest above the ark in the back chamber of the sanctuary, called the Holy of Holies.

Other commentators have noted that God says: “make me a holy-place, and I will dwell among them”—not “inside it”.

For example, in the 19^th century Malbim wrote: “He commanded that each individual should build him a sanctuary in the recesses of his heart, that he should prepare himself to be a dwelling place for the Lord … as well as an altar on which to offer up every portion of his soul to the Lord …”⁵

This has become a popular interpretation in modern times. But it begs the question of why God asks the Israelites to build a structure made out of wood, metal, fabric, and leather.

Insecurity

When God dictated a long list of laws to Moshe right after the revelation to all the Israelites at Mount Sinai, one of the first things God said was:

An altar of earth you may make for me, and you should slaughter upon it your complete-burned offerings and your wholeness offerings, your sheep and your cattle. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and I will bless you. (Exodus 20:21)

Since God is everywhere, and can come to people anywhere, why do the Israelites now need to build an elaborate temporary structure for God to dwell in?

One proposed reason why God calls for a mishkan is that it will help to convince the Israelites that God is with them. Just before Moshe comes back down the mountain with the instructions for making the mishkan, the Israelites in the camp are ordering Aharon (“Aaron” in English) to make them “a god that will go before us” (Exodus 32:1). As I wrote in my post Beha-alotkha & Ki Tisa: Calf Replacement, once the people believe they will never see Moshe again, they cannot bear to go on without at least an idol. So Aharon makes the golden calf.

Does God know ahead of time that the Israelites will want a concrete symbol of the divine? Or, as much classic commentary claims, are the passages in the book of Exodus out of order regarding the timing of events? Either way, the people are insecure, prone to feeling abandoned, and God orders the building of the mishkan.

Cassuto wrote: “… the children of Israel, after they had been privileged to witness the Revelation of God on Mount Sinai, were about to journey from there and thus draw away from the site of the theophany. … it seemed to them as though the link had been broken, unless there were in their midst a tangible symbol of God’s presence among them.”⁶

We learn in the book of Numbers that when the Israelites do finally march north from Mount Sinai, God’s manifestation as cloud by day and fire by night returns to guide them and signal when they should break camp.⁷ But the people do not know ahead of time that this will happen. And they need something concrete to reassure them right away.

Making something

Commentators through the centuries have proposed additional reasons why God wants the Israelites to build a mishkan. One of my favorites appears in Bamidbar Rabbah:

“You find that all the days that they were engaged in the labor of the Tabernacle, they were not complaining. When they completed the labor of the Tabernacle, the Holy One blessed be He was shouting: Woe, let them not return to complaining like they used to complain.”⁸

Personally, I find that there is nothing like doing creative, self-directed work to take my mind off my worries. And the Israelites get something close to that.

In the Torah portion Ki Tisa, before God gives Moshe the first pair of stone tablets, God appoints a master craftsman and his assistant (Betzaleil and Ohaliav) from among the Israelites, and hints that other skilled people will work under their supervision.⁹ When Moshe passes on God’s instructions to the people in the portion Vayakheil, he says outright:

And everyone wise of mind among you should come and make everything that God has commanded. (Exodus 35:10)

Then both men and women donate materials, and both men and women use their skills to make the pieces of the mishkan and the priests’ vestments. And during that whole year, nobody rebels, grumbles, or complains.

Changing

Could the experience of working together to create all these things for God permanently change the Israelites’ attitude? Jonathan Sacks thought so when he wrote: “The Tabernacle did not last forever, but the lesson it taught did. It is not what God does for us that transforms us, but what we do for God. … It is what we do, not what is done to us, that makes us free. That is a lesson as true today as it was then.”¹⁰

Sacks explained: “When a central power—even when this is God Himself—does everything on behalf of the people, they remain in a state of arrested development. They complain instead of acting. They give way easily to despair. When the leader, in this case Moses, is missing, they do foolish things, none more so than making a Golden Calf. There is only one solution: to make the people co-architects of their own destiny, to get them to build something together, to shape them into a team and show them that they are not helpless, that they are responsible and capable of collaborative action.”¹¹

Yet making the mishkan and the priests’ vestments does not lead to a permanent change in the Israelites’ self-confidence or attitude toward God. Perhaps the problem is that they do all the craftsmanship in their camp at the foot of Mount Sinai, where they have water, daily manna, grazing for their livestock, and no enemies. Once the Israelites leave Mount Sinai, the complaints and rebellions start up again—mostly because the men (former slaves who have fought in only one clash)¹² have no confidence in their ability to conquer Canaan by force of arms. Nobody is training them for war, and they cannot believe that God will provide enough magical help to make them win. Only after the Israelites have spent 40 years in the wilderness does the next generation march in and begin the conquest.

What if you had never had a chance to take initiative, to make decisions about your life, or to use your own talents—and then suddenly, like the Israelites, you were invited to contribute to a major creative project?

I lived under my mother’s thumb until I was 17 and I escaped to college. Like the Israelites eating manna and camping below Mount Sinai, I was not completely independent; my parents still paid for my expenses. But I lived in a dorm, I chose my own friends and my own classes, I did my own work, and I earned appreciation and respect. When my mother tried to take over my life again, I rebelled. I made mistakes, but I managed to become an adult.

The Israelites in the book of Exodus have one glorious year as volunteers making the mishkan. But once they finish, they have to go back to being dependent and following orders. No more contributions of their own are accepted. And they do not view God or Moshe as benign parents in the book of Numbers, because they are marching toward what they assume is pointless death at the hands of the Canaanites. Naturally they lapse back into complaining. Yet somehow, they raise their own children to be more confident in God and more confident in themselves. That is the way they achieve a permanent change.

Rabbi Chayim ibn Attar, Or HaChayim, 18^th century, translated in www.sefaria.org.
Rabbi Harold Kushner, editor of d’rash commentary, Etz Hayim, The Rabbinical Assembly of The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, 2001, p. 486. See Exodus 3:21-22, 11:2-3, and 12:35-36.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Essays on Ethics, A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible: “The Labor of Gratitude: Terumah”, reprinted in www.sefaria.org.
Numbers 24:5; Isaiah 22:16, 54:2; Jeremiah 19:18; Ezekiel 25:4; Habakuk 1:6; Psalms 49:12, 87:2; Job 18:21, 21:28, and 39:6; and Songs 1:8.
Malbim (acronym of 19^th-century rabbi Meir Leibush Weisser), quoted by Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot, translated by Aryeh Newman, The Joint Authority for Jewish and Zionist Education, Jerusalem, 1996, p. 483.
20^th century rabbi Umberto Cassuto (a.k.a. Moshe David Cassuto) quoted by Leibowitz, ibid., p. 484.
Numbers 9:15-23.
Bamidbar Rabbah, 11^th or 12^th century, translation in Rabbi Chayim ibn Attar, Or HaChayim, 18^th century, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Exodus 31:1-13.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, 21^st century, Covenant & Conversation, “Building Builders: Terumah”.
Sacks, Covenant & Conversation, “The Home We Build Together: Terumah 5781” (2021).
With the men of Amaleik in Exodus 17:8-13.

Mishpatim: Choreography and Responsibility

After all the Israelites experience the revelation at Mount Sinai,¹ God dictates about 50 specific laws to Moshe (“Moses” in English) in this week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim (Exodus/Shemot 21:1-24:18).

Then [God] said to Moshe: “Go up to God, you and Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and bow down from afar. Then Moshe alone will draw near to God. But they must not draw near. And the people must not go up with him.” (Exodus 24:1-2)

Before Moshe carries out this instruction, he shares all the laws from God with the Israelites.

Then Moshe came and recounted to the people all of the words of God and all the laws. And all the people answered with one voice, and they said: “All the words that God has spoken, we will do.” (Exodus 24:3)

Next Moshe writes it all down. In the morning he leads an elaborate covenantal ceremony (without being told to), He builds an altar, sets up twelve standing stones, and orders young men to sacrifice bulls to God. Moshe splashes half of the bulls’ blood on the altar, then reads God’s laws out loud. This time the Israelites shout:

“All that God has spoken, we will do and we will heed!” And Moshe took the blood and splashed it on the people. And he said: “Here is the blood of the covenant that God has cut with you by means of all these words!” (Exodus 24:7-8)

Only after he has done all he can to secure the commitment of the Israelite people does Moshe lead the elders partway up the mountain.

And they went up, Moshe and Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. And they saw the God of Israel, and under [God’s] feet something like a brick pavement of sapphire, and like the substance of the heavens for purity. And God did not send out [God’s] hand against the eminent Israelites. And they beheld God, and they ate and they drank. (Exodus 24:9-11)

Where does Moshe go next?

Then God said to Moshe: “Come up to me on the mountain. And you will be there, and I will give you the stone tablets, and the teaching, and the commands that I have inscribed to teach them.” And Moshe and his attendant, Yehoshua, stood up, and Moshe went up the mountain of God. (Exodus 24:12-13)

If the party of 74 men is still sitting partway up Mount Sinai when God speaks to Moshe again, where did Yehoshua (“Joshua” in English) come from?

Bachya ben Asher wrote: “Joshua was one of the seventy elders mentioned previously as having had a vision of God. In fact, Joshua was the most senior of these seventy elders.”²

From the book of Judges on, elders are older men who sit in the gate of their town or village and judge disputes and legal issues the residents bring to them. In the previous Torah portion in Exodus, Moshe appointed elders as lower court judges who would refer the difficult cases to him.³

Yehoshua (Joshua) is a young man (see Exodus 33:11 below), and he has a different role. He waits on Moshe, and he also served as the commander when the Israelite men fought off the Amalekites on the way to Mount Sinai.⁴ So although Yehoshua has as much status as an elder, I do not believe he is one.

The next verse implies that not even the elders are still partway up the mountain when God speaks to Moshe again.

And [Moshe] said to the elders: “Wait bazeh for us until we return to you! And hey, Aharon and Chur are with you. Whoever has a lawsuit can approach them.” (Exodus 24:14)

bazeh (בָּזֶה) = here, at this place.

Moshe tells the elders to “wait here” until he and Yehoshua (Joshua) return. Where is “here”?

The rest of the Israelites, including any plaintiffs or witnesses, are forbidden to go even halfway up the mountain. So the elders cannot judge their cases from that spot. Moshe must be instructing them, along with Aharon and Chur, to wait at the foot of the mountain. (It is reasonable to assume that Chur is one of the 70 elders, since he and Aharon supported Moshe’s staff during the battle with the Amalekites.)

Therefore bazeh, “at this place”, means the camp at the foot of Mount Sinai. Moshe must have led everyone back down to camp before he gave the elders their orders.

Moshe’s instructions also reveal that he expects to be at the top of the mountain for some time. If he thought that receiving “the stone tablets, and the teaching” from God would take only a day or two, he would probably say that anyone with a dispute too difficult for the seventy elders could postpone the case until he gets back. Instead, he appoints Aharon and Chur as a high court while he is gone.

Where does Yehoshua go?

Moshe and Yehoshua (Joshua) stand up. Moshe tells the elders to wait “for us until we return to you”.

Then Moses went up the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. (Exodus 24:15)

If Moshe goes up the mountain alone, where does Yehoshua go?

In the 11^th century C.E., Rashi wrote: “As a disciple he was accompanying the teacher as far as the place where the bounds of the mountain were marked out, whence onward he was not permitted to proceed. … Joshua pitched his tent there and stayed there during the whole forty days which Moses spent on the mountain. For thus we find that when Moses came down from the mountain it states, ‘and Joshua heard the voice of the people that they shouted’— from which we may infer that he was not with them in the camp.”⁵

View at the top

The text says that Moshe went into the cloud (he-anan, הֶעָנָן),not a cloud (which would be just anan). So this must be the manifestation of God that led the Israelites from Egypt to Mount Sinai in the shape of a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. In the next verse, the cloud is explicitly identified with God.

And the kavod of God settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days. And [God] called to Moses on the seventh day from the midst of the cloud. (Exodus 24:16)

kavod (כָּבוֹד) = impressive appearance, glory, splendor, weight.

Apparently Moshe climbs up as far as God’s cloud of glory, then waits in front of the blank white fog until God calls him inside.

According to Sefer Olam Rabbah, “This was in order for Moses to purify himself.”⁶

According to Avot de Rabbi Natan, the six-day wait was “So that he could be emptied of all the food and drink that was in his stomach, so that when he was sanctified, he would be like the angels who serve God.”⁷

Bachya ben Asher wrote that during those six days, “Moses prepared himself mentally for meeting Hashem [God] …”⁸

View from the bottom

While Moshe is staring at the divine cloud, the Israelites below are seeing something different.

But the appearance of the kavod of God was like a consuming fire at the top of the mountain in the eyes of the Israelites. (Exodus 24:17)

Moses sees God’s kavod as a cloud, or a wall of fog; it obscures his vision but is not deadly. The Israelites below see God’s kavod as a “consuming” fire.

When I taught a class on this part of the Torah portion in 2024, my adult students came up with a good metaphorical explanation: The first time Moshe climbs Mount Sinai, he sees God as fire in the bush that burned but was not consumed. By the time he returns to Mount Sinai, he has developed a relationship with God, so God appears to him as mysterious, like a cloud, but not threatening. The Israelites below, however, have not been conversing with God, so God appears as a dangerous consuming fire to them.

They see their leader, Moshe, walk into the fire, and they doubt that he will ever come back. (See my post Mishpatim: Seeing the Cloud.) It amazes me that nevertheless the Israelites wait for forty days before going to Aharon and demanding an idol to lead them the rest of the way to Canaan.

Into the cloud

Then Moses entered the midst of the cloud, and he went up the mountain, and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights. (Exodus 24:18)

Jewish midrash noted that later in Exodus, Moses is unable to enter the newly-constructed Tent of Meeting “because the cloud had settled on it and the kavod of God filled the dwelling-place” (Exodus 40:35). So how does Moses manage to get into the cloud of God’s kavod on Mount Sinai?

According to the Talmud, “This teaches that the Holy One, Blessed be He, grabbed Moses and brought him into the cloud, since he could not enter on his own.”⁹

Asher Tzvi of Ostrow wrote: “When Moses ascended on high, a cloud came up against him, and Moses our teacher did not know if one rides it or holds it. Immediately, the cloud opened its mouth and Moses entered it, and he walked into the firmament like a man walking on land.”¹⁰ This midrash continues with Moshe encountering angels in the heavens before he finally reaches God.

When I researched this blog post, I wondered if the apparent inconsistencies in the locations of Moshe (Moses), Yehoshua (Joshua), Aharon (Aaron), and the elders were due to a redactor patching together several traditional stories about the same event. But I have not found any support for this hypothesis in modern source scholarship. Friedman views the story as coming from a single source from Exodus 24:1 through “And Moses went up the mountain” (Exodus 24:15); the author does not change until the second half of Exodus 24:15, “and the cloud covered the mountain”.¹¹

When I did a close reading of the text, I discovered that the choreography actually does work if Moshe leads Aharon and the elders back down to the Israelite camp after their vision of God’s feet, and that is where God speaks to Moshe again, and Yehoshua (Joshua) jumps up and accompanies him as far as the foot of the route back up Mount Sinai.

The story would be tidier if after Moshe’s party beheld God’s feet and ate and drank, Moshe continued up the mountainside alone. I can imagine Aharon leading his sons and the seventy elders back down to the Israelite camp, while Yehoshua waits there for forty days.

But I think that Moshe does not want to leave a large group of dazed and excited men, who have been drinking as well as eating, alone on the mountainside. What if they doze off and wake up disoriented? What if they cannot find their way down? What if it gets dark and they stumble?

After God tells Moshe: “Go up to God, you and Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and bow down from afar” (Exodus 24:1), Moshe postpones leaving until he has conducted an impressive covenant ceremony with all the Israelites. As their leader, he is responsible for them, and he decides that he should secure the loyalty of all of the people before doing any special ritual with the elders.

When the ritual with the elders is complete,¹² Moshe once again puts his responsibility as a leader first. He makes sure everyone gets home safely before he climbs Mount Sinai again, even though retracing his steps means a lot more physical labor.

Some prophets might be tempted to rush toward God, eager for a personal revelation. But Moshe takes care of his people first.

If only all our leaders were as responsible as Moshe, our lives would be blessed.

“The revelation at Mount Sinai” commonly refers to Exodus 19:13-20:17 in the Torah portion Yitro, which includes spectacular volcanic effects including synesthesia (see my post Yitro & Bereishit: Don’t Even Touch It) and the pronouncement of the “Ten Commandments”.
14^th-century Rabbi Bachya ben Asher, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Exodus 18:24-25.
Exodus 17:8-13.
Rashi, acronym of 11^th-century Rabbi Shlomon Yitzchaki, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Sefer Olam Rabbah, 2^nd century C.E., translation in www.sefaria.org.
Avot de Rabbi Natan, 650-950 C.E., translation in www.sefaria.org.
Bachya ben Asher, ibid.
Talmud Bavli, Yoma 4b, translation by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, William Davidson Talmud in www.sefaria.org.
Rabbi Asher Tzvi of Ostrow, Ma’ayan HaChochmah, 1816.
Richard Elliott Friedman, The Bible with Sources Revealed, HarperSanFrancisco, 2003, pp. 160-161.
See my post Yitro & Mishpatim: Four Attempts at a Lasting Covenant.

Haftarat Yitro—Isaiah: The Volunteer

Every week of the year has its own Torah portion, a reading from the first five books of the Bible, and its own haftarah, an accompanying reading from the books of the prophets. This week the Torah portion is Yitro (Exodus 18:1-20:23) and the haftarah is Isaiah 6:1-13 in the Sefardic tradition (Isaiah 6:1-7:6 plus 9:5-6 in the Ashkenazic tradition).

I have met a few mystics who savor every numinous experience, and spend their lives trying to get more of them. I have not met any prophets, as far as I know. But since I am a Jew who loves research and analysis, I study the Hebrew Bible, including its many stories of prophets who see visions, hear God, and spend their lives passing on God’s words.

The biblical individual who is most reluctant about becoming a prophet is Moshe (“Moses”), who argues with God at the burning bush before finally succumbing and accepting his vocation.¹ In this week’s Torah portion, Yitro, Moshe has returned to Mount Sinai as the leader of a horde of Israelites from Egypt, and God gives them all a frightening experience of the transcendent. (See my post Yitro & Bereishit: Don’t Even Touch It.) It does not turn anyone else into a prophet.

Most of the biblical prophets after Moses simply hear from God and do what they are told;² we never find out how their vocation began. The exceptions are Shmuel (“Samuel”), who hears a voice as a boy when he is sleeping near the sanctuary;³ Elisha, who is chosen by another prophet, and runs after him;⁴ Yermiyahu (“Jeremiah”), who hears God tell him that he was born to be a prophet;⁵ and Yeshayahu (“Isaiah” in English) in this week’s haftarah.

Starting with a vision

The first 39 chapters of the book of Isaiah, commonly called “First Isaiah”, record the prophecies of an 8^th-century citizen of the kingdom of Judah, possibly a priest, named Yeshayahu son of Amotz. (The remaining 27 chapters in the book, commonly called “Second Isaiah”, were added two or three centuries later and feature an unnamed prophet.)

In the sixth chapter of the book of Isaiah, and Yeshayahu (Isaiah) tells the story of his call to prophecy.

In the year of the death of the king Uziayahu,⁶ I saw my Lord sitting on a high and lofty throne. And the skirts of [God’s] robe filled the heykhal. (Isaiah 6:1)

heykhal (הֵיכָל) = temple, palace.

What is the setting for this vision? The commentary is divided on whether Yeshayahu (Isaiah) is standing inside the temple in Jerusalem, or seeing a divine palace in the heavens.

Alter wrote: “Since it was believed that there was a correspondence between the Temple in Jerusalem and God’s celestial palace, it is understandable that Isaiah should have a vision of God enthroned in the Temple. God apparently is imagined as having gigantic proportions …”⁷

If Yeshayahu (Isaiah) were indeed a priest standing in the main room of the temple, he would see real clouds of incense filling the hall before he beholds God seated on a throne.

On the other hand, Canaanite religions told of various gods coming to a supreme god’s palace in the sky to decide the fate of human beings. The Israelite religion evolved to reject other gods, but the idea of a palace in the sky persisted.⁸

Or the vision might combine both settings. Rashi wrote: “I saw Him sitting on His throne in heaven with His feet in the Temple, His footstool in the Sanctuary …”⁹

Seraf, mosaic in Haggia Sophia, Istanbul

Yeshayahu (Isaiah) sees not only the figure of a seated man wearing a robe that overflows to fill the room, but also supernatural attendants serving him.

Serafim were standing above, each with six wings; with one pair he covered his face, and with a pair he covered his feet, and with a pair he was flying. And this one called to that one, and said: “Holy! Holy! Holy! The glory of the God of tzevaot fills the earth!” (Isaiah 6:2-3)

serafim (שְׂרָפִים) = burning creatures—either poisonous snakes or fiery angelic beings. (From the root verb saraf, שָׂרַף = burn.)

tzevaot (צְבָאוֹת) = armies. (Singular: tzeva, צְבָא. See my post Haftarat Bo—Jeremiah: The Ruler of All Armies.)

The term “God of Armies” often refers to armies on earth, but in some contexts God is the master of metaphorical “armies” of stars—or perhaps serafim—in the sky. In the first book of Kings, a prophet named Mikhayahu son of Yimlah introduces a prophecy by announcing:

“Thus I heard the word of God: I saw God sitting on [God’s] throne, and all the tzeva of the heavens were standing above, to [God’s] right and to [God’s] left.” (1 Kings 22:19)

According to Kugel, the description of serafim in the book of Isaih affirms that the stars and planets are not other gods, but “actually seraphim, ‘burners,’ who lit up the sky but whose principal function was to praise God, calling out, ‘Holy, holy, holy’ to the Creator.”¹⁰

And the doorposts shook from the sound of the calling, and the house was filling with smoke. And I said: “Alas for me, because I am undone! For I am a man of impure lips, and I live among a people of impure lips. Yet my eyes have seen the King, the God of tzevaot!” (Isaiah 6:4-5)

Yesheyahu (Isaiah) believes he is unworthy of a vision of God. And he identifies his lips as the source of impurity.

Kugel pointed out that “there is no such concept as ‘impure lips’ in biblical law.”¹¹ Ritual impurity comes from contact with corpses, genital discharges, and skin disease. Other commentators have noted that in the book of Exodus, Moshe objects to being a prophet on the grounds that he has uncircumcized lips.¹² But Moshe means that he is a poor speaker, not that his lips are contaminated.

Apparently Yesheyahu (Isaiah) is thinking along the same lines as the prophet in the later book of Zephaniah, who connects purity of lips, i.e. language, with not lying or speaking deceitfully.¹³

At any rate, Yesheyahu’s focus on his lips indicates that he already believes, or hopes, that God wants him to be a prophet. How could he speak for God when he has “impure lips”, like all the other Israelites?

Then one of the serafim flew over to me, and in his hand was a live coal; with tongs he had taken it from on top of the altar. And he touched it to my lips, and said: “Behold, this touch on your lips removes your iniquity and atones for your guilt.” (Isaiah 6:6-7)

Volunteering

Then I heard the voice of my Lord saying: “Whom will I send? And who will go for us?” And I said: “Here I am. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8)

This verse, like the one about the tzevaot of the heavens, echoes the vision that the prophet Mikhayahu describes to King Achav of Israel.

“And God asked: “Who will entice Achav, so he will go up, then fall at Ramot-Gilead?” And this one said thus, and that one said thus. Then a spirit went out and stood before God and said: “I will entice him.” (1 Kings 22:20-21)

This spirit plans to entice King Achav by putting lies into the mouths of all the human prophets, so that the king will march on Ramot-Gilead and be defeated.

In Yesheyahu’s (Isaiah’s) vision, God asks “Who will go for us?” without saying what the mission is. Yesheyahu, elated by his purification, enthusiastically volunteers.

A doomed job

Isaiah Accepts Mockery Because of His Faith, by Augustin Hirschvogel, 1549

And [God] said: “Go, and you must say to the people: Keep hearing, but you will not understand; and keep seeing, but you will not perceive!” (Isaiah 6:9)

This message seems designed to make people hate the messenger. Rashi explained that God is frustrated that the people of Judah are making no effort to understand what God wants from them.¹⁴ Plaut wrote: “The transgressors don’t want to be confronted with the truth, and when someone tries to tell it to them, they close their minds and become incapable of listening any further.”¹⁵

Then why does God want a prophet to speak at all? According to Steinsaltz, “… the people were warned so that they would recall the warning sometime later.”¹⁶

Next God informs Yeshayahu (Isaiah) that he must disguise the truth—the very behavior that made him believe his lips were impure.

“Make the mind of this people obtuse, and make its ears dull and its eyes blurred; lest it see with its eyes and hear with its ears and discern with its mind, and turn around [repent] and heal itself”. (Isaiah 6:10)

According to the Talmud, God is referring to the healing of forgiveness.¹⁷ And God does not want to forgive the people yet. Prophets in the Hebrew Bible (except for ecstatics; see my post Haftarat Ki Tissa: Ecstatic versus Rational Prophets) normally warn nations and kings about the bad things that will happen if they do not change their ways; the prophet and God hope that people will heed the warning and change. But in this case, God is determined to punish Judah, and does not want its population to repent and change too soon.

I wonder if Yeshayahu (Isaiah) would have volunteered so eagerly in his vision if he had known God’s plan.

On the other hand, Yeshayahu has already delivered prophecies for five chapters before he recounts what he saw and how he volunteered to be a prophet. Perhaps his failure to get anyone to change has made him conclude, bitterly, that God does not really want anyone to repent, so he tells the story of his vision accordingly.

Then I said: “How long, my Lord?” And [God] said: “Until towns are ruined and there are no inhabitants, and in houses there are no humans, and the ground is a ruined desolation. For God will send the humans far away, and [there will be] many forsaken places in the midst of the land.” (Isaiah 6:11-12)

Will Yesheyahu’s (Isaiah’s) deceptive prophecies result in the desolation of Judah? Or must Yesheyahu keep uttering ineffective prophecies until Judah is ruined and empty?

The idea of being sent far away would occur naturally to Yesheyahu (Isaiah), since while he was uttering prophecies in the southern kingdom of Judah, the Assyrian Empire was conquering the northern kingdom of Israel and forcibly relocating tens of thousands of its citizens.¹⁸

The vision closes with God saying:

“But while a tenth part is still in it [Judah], then it will turn back [repent]. And it will be ravaged like the terebinth and the oak, of which stumps are left when [they are] felled. Its stump is a holy seed.” (Isaiah 6:13)

Steinsaltz explained: “The people who will ultimately survive will be holy. They will have endured everything that was necessary, and they will not fall into decline again.”¹⁹

The northern kingdom of Israel never regenerated after so many of its citizens were deported by Assyria. In the 6^th century B.C.E., the southern kingdom of Judah suffered from similar deportations by the conquering Babylonians. Some of those Judahites did return later to rebuild Jerusalem. So either Yesheyahu’s (Isaiah’s) vision concludes with a long-term prediction, or a later scribe added the last verse to this story.

The prophetic careers of both Moshe (Moses) and Yesheyahu (Isaiah) begin with a numinous experience in which God speaks to them. Both men object that their lips are not suitable for a job as God’s agent—Moshe because he cannot speak well, Yesheyahu because he has been speaking deceptively.

Moshe continues to argue with God, finally saying “Send someone else!” before he gives up and obeys God’s order to go back to Egypt.²⁰ Then he grows in the job, argues with God on behalf of the Israelites, and succeeds in bringing the next generation to Canaan before he dies.

Yesheyahu (Isaiah) embraces his calling as soon as his lips are purified. He spends 38 years conscientiously announcing prophecies, then dies after telling King Chizkiyahu (“Hezekiah” in English) that Babylon will seize his country, his children, and the treasures in his palace.²¹ Despite all his prophecies, Yesheyahu never sees the fall of Judah, nor the rebuilding of Jerusalem.

Yet once someone in the Hebrew Bible starts speaking for God, he or she is not allowed to quit.²²

Today, individuals are called prophets if they have unusually keen spiritual and moral insight and a way with words, and use these abilities to publicly call for change in a society. I wonder what moves them to embark on this difficult path in life. Are they overwhelmed by a vision? Are they volunteers? Are they driven by a feeling that they have no other choice?

See my posts Shemot: Empathy,Fear, & Humility, Shemot: Names and Miracles, Shemot: Not a Man of Words, and Shemot: Moses Gives Up.
Except for Jonah, who runs away, then reluctantly does his job after being swallowed and vomited out by a big fish.
1 Samuel 3:1-10.
1 Kings 10:19-21.
See my post Haftarat Shemot or Matot—Jeremiah: A Congenital Prophet.
King Uziyahu of Judah died sometime between 742 and 734 B.C.E.. Modern scholars believe the prophecies in First Isaiah were recited orally, and not written down until at least a century later.
Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, Volume 2: Prophets, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2019, p. 640.
E.g. Micah 1:2-3.
Rashi (acronym of 11^th-century Rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki), translation in www.sefaria.org.
James L. Kugel, How to Read the Bible, Free Press, New York, 2007, p. 541.
Ibid.
Exodus 6:12.
Zephaniah 3:9, 3:13.
Rashi, ibid.
W. Gunther Plaut, The Haftarah Commentary, translated by Chaim Stern, UAHC Press, New York, 1996, p.170.
Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, Introductions to Tanakh: Isaiah, in www.sefaria.org.
Talmud Bavli, Megillah 17b.
Yeshayahu’s prophecies began around 740 B.C.E., and were recorded around 640 B.C.E. The Assyrian deportations occurred in 734-732, 729-724, and 716-715 B.C.E.
Steinsaltz, ibid.
Exodus 4:13.
Isaiah 39:5-7. This passage may also have been added by a later scribe.
See the book of Jonah.

Beshallach & Judges: Stuck in the Mud

Hittite War Chariot Crushes Enemy, 13th century BCE bas-relief

Prosperous kingdoms in the Ancient Near East had horse-drawn war chariots; before the reign of King Shlomoh (“Solomon” in English) the Israelites had only foot soldiers.¹

In each enemy war chariot stood a driver and one or two archers, all armed with swords in case of close combat. On an open plain, a battalion of chariots could slaughter a large regiment of foot soldiers—unless the foot soldiers have a secret weapon.

And the Israelites do, as in both this week’s Torah portion, Beshallach (Exodus/Shemot 13:17-17:16), and the accompanying haftarah reading, Judges 4:4-5:31: a God who controls the weather.

At the Sea of Reeds

And God caused the people to turn onto the road in the wilderness of the Sea of Reeds. And the people went up armed from the land of Egypt. (Exodus 13:18)

Although God had ordered the Israelites to “borrow” silver and gold objects from their desperate Egyptian neighbors before they left,² God said nothing about weapons. The fact that the Israelites “borrowed” swords as well only shows that they were already afraid of being attacked, not that they knew how to use their weapons.³

A pillar of cloud by day and fire by night leads the Israelites to the shore of an inlet or brackish lake called the Sea of Reeds. Meanwhile, God tells Moses:

“I will strengthen the heart of Paroh [“Pharaoh”], and he will pursue them. Then I will be glorified through Paroh and through all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am God!” (Exodus 14:4)

On the theory that an act of God is an act of nature, it makes sense that after the pharaoh has made a habit of hardening his own heart after each plague God sent to Egypt, now his heart hardens naturally when he hears where the Israelites have gone.

And he harnessed his chariot, and he took his [fighting] people with him, and he took 600 choice chariots, and every [other] chariot in Egypt, every one with a team of three. (Exodus 14:6-7)

The pharaoh’s chariots catch up with the Israelites at the shore of the Sea of Reeds.

… and the Israelites raised their eyes, and hey! Egypt was setting out after them! And they were very afraid. And the Israelites cried out to God. (Exodus 14:10)

Many classic commentators questioned why the Israelites, with 600,000 men,⁴ would be afraid of an Egyptian force of 600 chariots.⁵ Even if every chariot held two archers and was pulled by two horses, how many men can 1200 archers and 1200 war horses strike down before they are overwhelmed by the remaining foot soldiers?

Chizkuni summarized the most common explanation: “Their fear was based on their slave mentality. Every slave is afraid of his master. These Israelites had not yet proven to themselves that they could fend for themselves.”⁶

After crying out to God, the people protest to Moshe (“Moses”in English), who tells them that God will fight the Egyptian chariot battalion, and they should all be quiet.

Then the messenger of God that was going in front of the machaneih of Israel pulled out and went around behind them; the pillar of cloud pulled out from in front of them and stood behind them. And it came between the machaneih of Egypt and the machaneih of Israel … (Exodus 14:19-20)

machaneih (מַחֲנֵה) = camp (as a place with temporary structures for spending the night); camp (as a faction or party of people).

Here, nobody is camping for the night. The sun sets, and the pillar of cloud between the two camps turns into a pillar of fire.

And Moshe stretched out his hand over the sea, and God made the sea go back with a strong east wind all night, and made the sea [bed] dry land; for the waters split. And the Israelites came through the middle of the sea on the dry land, and the waters were a wall for them on their right and on their left. (Exodus 14:21-22)

While the Israelites and their livestock are walking in the dark ahead of the pillar of fire, the Egyptians see the pillar of fire receding down a stretch of dry land.

Then the Egyptians pursued and came after them: all of Paroh’s horses and his chariots and his horsemen, into the middle of the sea. (Exodus 14:23)

The Israelites are climbing the bank of the far shore while the Egyptians are racing across the temporary road of dry land. Then, during the last watch of the night, God acts again.

And God looked down at the Egyptian camp from the pillar of fire and cloud, and yaham the Egyptian camp. (Exodus 14:24)

yaham (יָהָם) = he confused, confounded, panicked. (From the verb hamam, הָמַם = roused, brought into movement and confusion, caused pandemonium.)

And [God] loosened the wheels of his [the pharaoh’s] chariots and made them drive with heaviness. Then [the king of] Egypt said: “I must flee from the face of Israel, because God wages war for them against Egypt!” (Exodus 14: 25)

What is God doing to the Egyptian chariots?

Rashi suggested: “Through the power of the fire of the pillar of fire the wheels were burnt and the chariots were thus dragged along and those who were sitting in them were thrown about and their limbs were all put out of joint.”⁷

Escape Over the Red Sea, Golden Haggadah, ca. 1320, Spain

Others proposed that many of the panicked Egyptian chariot drivers tried to turn around, but then they crashed into the chariots behind them.⁸

But according to Robert Alter, “The simplest explanation is that as the water begins to seep back and before it becomes a flood that engulfs the Egyptians, it turns the dry ground into muck. The chariot wheels rapidly become stuck in the mud … and break off from the axles.”⁹

At sunrise, when all the Israelites are safe on the other side, God tells Moshe to turn around and stretch out his hand again. The water comes crashing back in.

And the waters returned, and they covered the chariots and the horsemen of all of Paroh’s army that was coming after them into the sea; not one of them remained. (Exodus 14:28)

Thanks to God, the entire enemy force is dead.

At the Wadi Kidron

When the haftarah reading in the book of Judges opens, the Israelites have been subjugated by a Canaanite king named Yavin, whose general is Sisera.

And the Israelites cried out to God, because he had 900 iron chariots, and he had been violently oppressing the Israelites for twenty years. (Judges 4:3)

But now the Israelites have a leader like Moses, who was both a prophet (spokesperson for God) and a judge (legal authority).

And Devorah was a woman, a prophetess, a woman of torches. She was judging Israel at that time. (Judges 4:4)

Israelites from several northern tribes routinely come to consult Devorah at her home in Efrayim territory. Now she summons Barak, who presumably has some experience leading soldiers, from his home in Naftali territory.

And she said to him: “Has not God, the God of Israel, commanded you: ‘Go! And you must form a line on Mount Tabor, and take with you 10,000 men from the Naftalites and the Zevulunites. And I will form a line against you at the Wadi Kishon: Sisera, commander of Yavin’s army, and his procession. And I will give him into your hand!’” (Judges 4:6-7)

Mount Tabor was forested, providing the Israelites with both cover and a view of the upper Jezreel Valley, including the streambed of the Kishon River. Devorah communicates God’s promise to bring the enemy to the bottom of the mountain and give victory to the Israelites. But Barak is understandably nervous about the whole enterprise.

And Barak said to her: “If you go with me, I will go. But if you do not go with me, I will not go!” (Judges 4:8)

She agrees, and he rounds up 10,000 men. When General Sisera learns that 10,000 foot soldiers have gathered on Mount Tabor, he takes his 900 chariot crews, along with all his other fighters, to the Wadi Kishon.

The Defeat of Sisera, by Luca Girodano, 1692, detail

And Devorah said to Barak: “Arise, because this is the day that God is giving Sisera into your hand! Does not God go out before you?” And Barak came down from Mount Tabor, and 10,000 men were behind him. And God yaham Sisera and all the chariotry and all the camp toward the edge of the sword[s] in front of Barak. And Sisera got down from the chariot and fled on foot. And Barak was pursuing after the chariotry and after the machaneih … And the whole machaneih of Sisera fell by the edge of the sword. (Judges 4:13-16)

Only Sisera escapes, and he is then killed by a woman, Yael (“Jael” in English)—but that is a story for another post.

What does God do to the Canaanites and their chariots that causes panic and pandemonium? The story in the book of Judges holds no internal clues. But the poem following it does.

In both Exodus and Judges, the stories are followed by poems composed in a more ancient Hebrew than the rest of the Hebrew Bible. The poem that Devorah and Barak sing, known a the “Song of Devorah” (Judges 5:1-31), mentions more Israelite tribes, and describes Yael’s killing of Sisera differently. One line in the poem provides more information about the destruction of Sisera’s army:

The Wadi Kishon swept them away. (Judges 5:21) A wadi is a stream-bed that contains only a trickle during the dry season. A heavy rainstorm at the wadi’s source results in a rushing flood of water. Steinsaltz explained: “The Kishon Stream, which apparently overflowed its banks, swept them, some of the enemy soldiers, away. The ground turned muddy, making it impossible for the chariots to maneuver properly. Thus, the chariot riders became easy prey for the foot soldiers of Zebulun and Naphtali, who gained the advantage of speed.”¹⁰

In both the Torah portion and the haftarah, Israelites on foot face archers riding on chariots. And in both Exodus and Judges, God saves the Israelites by manipulating water so that the chariots will be stuck in the mud, and the enemy will die in the ensuing confusion and panic.

The Israelites are stuck in the role of victims until God strikes. In the portion Beshallach, they believe that they can never escape from the pharaoh. In the haftarah from Judges, they believe they will always be under the thumb of the Canaanite king.

Their enemies feel free to throw their weight around, until the situation reverses and they are the ones who are stuck. The chariot wheels that gave them such mobility are jammed by mud, immovable. And the Israelites are freed.

The English idiom ‘stick-in-the-mud” means someone who resists change, who does not adapt to new circumstances. Although the Israelites in both stories are afraid of the enemy who has long oppressed them, when their prophet—Moshe or Devorah—tells them in the name of God to do something new, they bravely go ahead and do it. The ex-slaves from Egypt walk in the dark between two walls of water, trusting that the ground will stay firm under their feet until they reach the other side. The oppressed Israelites in northern Canaan hurry down toward the chariot riders poised to shoot them.

But their enemies are stick-in-the-mud types even before the real mud arrives. The pharaoh keeps breaking his promises to let the Israelites go, hardening his heart because he cannot bear to give up the status quo. General Sisera is so used to success that he orders his troops into a wadi without thinking about the weather. When the Egyptian pharaoh and the Canaanite general encounter some unexpected mud, they are confused; they do not know how to handle it.

The road to freedom is courage. The road to destruction is the inability to change.

Kings 10:26.
Exodus 12:35-36.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, p. 228.
Exodus 12:37. Numbers in the Hebrew Bible are chosen for emotional impact, and are not meant to be historically accurate.
E.g. Ibn Ezra, Chizkuni, Bachya ben Asher.
Chizkuni, 13^th-century compilation of midrash by Rabbi Hezekiah ben Manoah, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Rashi, acronym of 11^th-century Rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki, translation in www.sefaria.org. 14^th-century rabbis Jacob ben Asher (Tur HaArokh) and Bachya ben Asher also expressed this opinion.
E.g. Ibn Ezra, Midrash Tanchuma, Chizkuni, Rashbam
Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2004, p. 395. Also proposed by Rabbi Obadiah Sforno in the 16^th century.
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, Introductions to Tanach: Judges, quoted on www.sefaria.org.

Bo: The First Passover

Plague of the death of the Firstborn, Spanish hagadah ca. 1490

The midnight death of the firstborn is the last of the ten plagues that God inflicts upon Egypt before the pharaoh lets the Israelites go in this week’s Torah portion, Bo (Exodus/Shemot 10:1-13:16). First Moshe (“Moses” in English) warns Paroh (“Pharaoh” in English) that all the firstborn sons¹ in Egypt will die—

“— from the firstborn son of Paroh who sits on his throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave who is behind the millstones, and the firstborn of every beast. Then there will be a loud cry throughout all the land of Egypt, the like of which has never been, and never will be again. But against all the Israelites, not a dog will sharpen its tongue …” (Exodus 11:5-7)

In other words, all the firstborn sons of Egyptians and their livestock will die, but the firstborn sons of Israelites and their livestock will be unharmed; not even a dog will snarl at them.

In order to make the Israelites exempt from this final plague, God orders a ritual.

Marking with blood

First, God tells Moshe that every Israelite household must acquire a lamb or a goat kid, an unblemished male yearling, on the tenth day of “this month”— Aviv, the first month of spring.² If a household has too few members to eat an entire lamb in one night, it should combine with another small household. The household must keep watch over the animal for four days, then slaughter it on the fourteenth day of the month.

The Signs on the Door, by James Tissot, ca. 1900

“Then they will take some of the blood and put it on the two door posts and on the lintel, on the houses where they will eat it.” (Exodus 12:7)

When Moshe passes on this instruction to the Israelite elders, he provides more details:

“Then you must take a bunch of oregano,³ and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and apply some of the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and the two doorposts. And none of you should go out through the entrance of his house until morning!” (Exodus 12:22)

Any firstborn sons inside a house with bloodstains around the door will live through the night. But if any Israelite firstborn sons are wandering around outside, they will be subject to the death of the firstborn. Moshe gives the same explanation that God gave him:

“And God will pass through to strike down Egyptians, and will see the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, and God ufasach the entrance, and will not give [release?] the destruction to enter your houses to strike.” (Exodus 12: 23)⁴

ufasach (וּפָסַח) = will skip, will hop, will limp. (From the same root verb as the name of the annual observance, Pesach (פֶּסַח). Pesach is called “Passover” in English instead of Skipover.)

Why do the Israelites have to paint or sprinkle blood around the entrance of every house where they gather to eat that night?

The simple answer implied by Moshe’s speech is that God could not identify which houses contained Israelites without a sign at the entrance—even though this same God has the ability to identify who is a firstborn son.

Classic Jewish commentators, offended by the idea that God would not already know which houses contained Israelites, offered other answers. Rashbam considered “the destruction”an agent that God releases upon Egypt; the bloodstains “insure that God’s angel killing the firstborn will bypass the houses with the sign of the blood on their door-frames.”⁵

Perhaps Chizkuni was thinking of an “angel” of destruction when he wrote: “The blood on the entrances of the homes of the Israelites should form the equivalent of the letter ח, in order to protect the entrance so that the destructive force which would kill the firstborn inside would not carry out that command. … the letter ח could be a symbol of חיים, life.”⁶

The two doorposts and the lintel across the top do make a shape like the Hebrew letter ח. But according to the Mekhilta DeRabbi Ishmael, it is not necessary to posit an angel; marking the doorframe with blood is simply a commandment, and “… in reward for your performance of the commandment, I reveal myself and have compassion on you.”⁷

Some commentators wrote that performing this particular commandment required courage and trust in God, because the Egyptians worshipped a ram god and would attack anyone who slaughtered a lamb and applied its blood to their doorframes. However, only two ancient Egyptian temples were dedicated to a ram god, both farther south than the Nile delta where the pharaoh and the Israelites live in the book of Exodus.⁸

Furthermore, at that point in the story the Egyptians are desperate to get the Israelites out of their country so that their God will stop afflicting them with plagues. Even the pharaoh is getting desperate. Just before God gives Moshe the instructions for the first Passover, God tells him that once the death of the firstborn has happened,

“… after that he will send you out from here. When he sends you, it is finished; he will absolutely drive you away from here.” (Exodus 11:1)

Then God says that the Israelites must ask their Egyptian neighbors to give them silver and gold objects. The Egyptians hand over their valuables, because—

“… God gave the people grace in the eyes of the Egyptians … (Exodus11:3)

It seems the Egyptians are more afraid of the Israelites than the Israelites are of the Egyptians.

Other commentators have considered the application of lamb’s blood around the doorframe a symbolic act. In the Jerusalem Talmud, “Rebbi Eliezer ben Jacob says, why at the door? Because by the door they went from servitude to freedom.”⁹

Maybe emerging through that bloodstained doorway the next morning is like a birth into a new state of being.

What to eat

After the Israelites paint or sprinkle lamb’s blood on their door frames, God tells Moshe,

“Then they must eat the meat on that night, roasted in fire, and matzot, and on bitter herbs they must eat it.” (Exodus 12:8)

matzot (מַצּוֹת) = plural of matzah (מַצָּה) = unleavened bread: flat sheets of flour and water, baked quickly without sourdough or any other leavening.

Why must the meat be roasted? In the 13^th century, Chizkuni wrote that roasting was necessary “so that the fragrance of the meat will assail the noses of the Egyptians and they will reflect on what is happening to their [ram] deity.”¹¹

But in the 20^th century, Everett Fox wrote: “Not raw or boiled, since what seems to be meant is an imitation of standard sacrifices.”¹² Similarly, matzah was the type of bread offered to God at the altar.¹³

Why must the Israelites eat matzah and bitter herbs with the roasted meat? The Talmud explains:

“The reason for matzah is because our forefathers were redeemed from Egypt, as it is stated: “And they baked the dough that they took out of Egypt as cakes of matzot, for it was not leavened, as they were thrust out of Egypt and could not tarry, neither had they prepared for themselves any victual” (Exodus 12:39). The reason for bitter herbs is because the Egyptians embittered our forefathers’ lives in Egypt, as it is stated: “And they embittered their lives with hard service, in mortar and in brick; in all manner of service in the field, all the service that they made them serve was with rigor” (Exodus 1:14).”¹⁴

Chizkuni wrote: “The bitter herbs symbolize the slavery, the unleavened bread symbolizes freedom, and the meat of the Passover symbolizes … being saved. At the time when the Passover lamb was being consumed the firstborn Egyptians were being killed.”¹⁵

But by the 18^th century, some commentators offered less symbolic explanations. Chayim ibn Attar wrote: “The requirement to eat bitter herbs with it is natural; Egyptians used to eat roast meat with something pungent as this enhanced the taste of the meat and enabled the person who ate it to thoroughly enjoy his meal.”¹⁶

And maybe God, on a night when the Israelites must eat a large dinner and also prepare to leave their homes forever at daybreak, prescribes the fastest way to bake new bread: mix flour and water and slap it in the oven without taking time for kneading it or letting it rise.¹⁷

Ready to go

But God has not finished prescribing how the Israelites must eat their last meal in their Egyptian homes.

“And like this you must eat it: [with] your hips girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staffs in your hand. And you must eat it in trembling haste. It is a pesach for God.” (Exodus 12:11)

Here the word pesach refers to a type of offering, anticipating the annual pesach offerings at the temple.¹⁸

Why must the Israelites eat a large meal in discomfort, standing up with their robes hiked up and tied around their hips, and holding s staff in one hand? They do not need to hurry for fear of the Egyptians, because the Egyptians want them to leave. Nor do they need to leave in a hurry because the pharaoh might change his mind again, since God said that the death of the firstborn will be the final plague.

So I agree with 14^th-century rabbi Bachya ben Asher, who wrote: “The symbolic meaning of “with girded loins and your shoes on your feet” (verse 11), was to depict people who are eager to be on their way to a new destination.”¹⁹

The Israelites must act as if they are in a hurry as a display of eagerness to leave Egypt and head toward Canaan.

Future observance

After repeating that the Israelites should mark their houses with blood so that God will skip over them, God wraps up the instructions to Moshe by saying:

“And this day will be a reminder for you, and you will celebrate it as a festival for God throughout your generations. A decree forever; you must celebrate it!” (Exodus 12:15)

Then God decrees avoidance of leaven, consumption of matzah for seven days, and a holy convocation on the first and seventh day—but nothing about eating standing up. After the Israelites have left their Egyptian homes, God adds that future Pesach meals must be eaten inside the house, without breaking bones, and men may eat it only if they are circumcized.²⁰

The Passover ritual in the Torah portion Bo adds drama to the story of the night before the Israelites leave Egypt. It also provides an opportunity for God to order future Passover rituals.

From the 10^th century B.C.E. to the destruction of the first temple in 587 B.C.E., Pesach was a spring pilgrimage-festival in which citizens of the kingdom of Judah brought lambs to slaughter at the temple and eat there, not at home, with unleavened bread.²¹ This practice was reinstated during the time of the second temple, 537 B.C.E. to 70 C.E.²² The purpose of the festival was to give God offerings in gratitude for rescuing the Israelites from servitude in Egypt.

After the fall of the second temple, Jews began celebrating Passover through a long and elaborate evening ritual at home. The basics of the ritual Jews use today were set down in the Mishnah of the Talmud tractate Pesachim around 200 C.E., and involve symbolic foods, four cups of wine, prayers, quotes from the Torah, and more—including a retelling of the story from the beginning of the book of Exodus through this week’s Torah portion, Bo. Blood is not daubed on doorways, eating lamb is optional, and participants are told to recline, not stand up.

Yet the underlying purpose of the first Passover ritual, the festival in temple times, and the ritual since 200 C.E. is the same: to teach the importance of freedom.

In the portion Bo, the Israelites must pretend to tremble with eagerness for their release from servitude, and stepping through their bloodstained doorways is like being born. In the temple festival, the technology of animal sacrifice is used to thank God for freedom and independence. And the script (hagadah) for the Passover that Jews have been celebrating for almost two millennia, the key statement and theme is “We were slaves; now we are free”.

Of course Jews have not always been free during the course of history, but we can pray to be free again. And many Jews today enhance the Passover ritual with prayers and symbols of hope that other peoples will be freed from oppression.

I pray that it may be so, without bloodshed, and with trembling haste.

Bekhor (בְּכוֹר) = firstborn male, son who was born first—no matter how old. In this case, the firstborn humans include both the first son of a man (such as the pharaoh) and the first son of a woman (such as the female slave).
The lunar month of Aviv (“ripening grain”) was renamed Nisan in the 6^th century B.C.E. It begins in March or April, when barley and wheat planted in the fall are forming ears of grain.
See my post Pesach, Metzora, & Chukat: Blood and Oregano.
In Exodus 12:13 God commands virtually the same thing, but says “and I will skip over you, and for you it will not be a blow to destruction (lemashchit) when I strike down the land of Egypt.”
Rashbam, the acronym for 12^th-century rabbi Shmuel ben Meir, translated in www.sefaria.org.
Chizkuni, the acronym for 13^th-century rabbi Chizkiah ben Manoach, translated in www.sefaria.org.
Mekhilta DeRabbi Ishmael, 3^rd century C.E., quoted by Nehama Leibowitz, New Studies in Shemot (Exodus), translated by Aryeh Newman in 1976, Maor Wallach Press, Jerusalem, 1996,p. 199.
The ram god Heryshaf was worshipped at Henen-Nesut, renamed Heracleopolis. The ram god Khnum was worshipped at Elephantine Island, and in the 5^th century B.C.E., the priests of Khnum wrecked the temple next door, which belonged to a Jewish colony, but the Elephantine papyrus in which a Jewish official recorded this does not say there was any loss of life.
Jerusalem Talmud, Kiddushin 1:2:31, translated in www.sefaria.org.
Chizkuni, ibid.
Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses, Schocken Books, New York, 1983, p. 315.
See my post Pesach: Being Unleavened, Part 2.
Talmud Bavli, Pesachim 116b, translated by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz in the Koren “William Davidson Talmud”, www.sefaria.org.
Chizkuni, ibid.
18^th-century rabbi Chayim ibn Attar, Or HaChayim, translated in www.sefaria.org.
Tractate Pischa 16:39, translated in www.sefaria.org.
See my post Pesach: Being Unleavened, Part 2 for an alternate explanation.
See Deuteronomy 16:2.
Rabbeinu Bachya ben Asher, 14^th century C.E. , translated in www.sefaria.org.
Exodus 13:43-49.
See Deuteronomy 16:1-8. When scribes wrote Deuteronomy, the “place that God will choose” meant the temple in Jerusalem.
Ezra 6:19-22; Talmud Bavli, Pesachim.

Va-eira & Shemot: Patchwork

Sometimes a narrative section in the Torah flows as smoothly as a tale told by a master storyteller. Other times the narrative is a patchwork of different versions of the story, with obvious seams.

Those who believe that God dictated every word in the first five books of the bible to Moshe (“Moses” in English) either ignore the seams, or do some mental acrobatics to explain them away. I like to imagine that God’s dictation is interrupted when God gets distracted by other things happening in the world. But I daresay the single-author stalwarts would never accept a God who has trouble multi-tasking.

I prefer to explain the patchwork parts of Torah by applying a key hypothesis of modern source criticism: that several versions of the same story were circulating in ancient Israel when a redactor¹ combined them to produce what became the authoritative version, the version recorded from then on in Torah scrolls. Sometimes the resulting narrative reads seamlessly. But some seams are definitely showing in the stitching together of last week’s Torah portion, Shemot (Exodus/Shemot 1:1-6:1) with this week’s Torah portion, Va-eira (Exodus/Shemot 6:2-9:35)—particularly regarding the question of who is qualified to speak for God.

Who speaks?

Moses Adores God in the Burning Bush, by James Tissot, ca. 1900

The first time Moshe goes to Mount Sinai, in the portion Shemot, he is a shepherd. He walks over to look at a bush that burns but is not consumed, and finds himself having a conversation with God—the God of his Israelite birth parents in Egypt. He learns that God plans to bring the oppressed Israelites out of Egypt and to the land of Canaan, and that he will be God’s agent.

Moshe tries five times to get out of this assignment. His penultimate attempt is to protest that he is a very poor speaker.

Then God said to him: “Who placed a mouth in the human being? … Is it not I, God? And now go! I myself will be with your mouth, and I will teach you what you will speak.” But he said: “Excuse me please, my lord. Please send by the hand of [someone] you should send!” (Exodus 4:11-12-13)

But God is not about to send someone else to liberate the Israelites. So God compromises, saying:

“Is not your brother Aharon the Levite? I know that he can certainly speak. And also, hey! He is going out to meet you, and he will see you and rejoice in his heart. And you will speak to him, and you will put the words in his mouth. And I myself will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you both what you must do. And he will speak for you to the people. And he himself will be like a mouth for you, and you yourself will be like a god for him. And this staff, you will take it in your hand, because you will do the signs.” (Exodus 4:14-17)

In other words, Moshe will be God’s spokesperson, and Aharon will be Moshe’s spokesperson. Moshe will use his staff to initiate the miracles God has planned to impress first the Israelites, then the pharaoh.

Who holds the staff?

Moshe heads toward Egypt, and meets his brother at Mount Sinai. He tells Aharon everything he knows so far. Then both men go to Egypt and gather the Israelite elders.

And Aharon spoke all the words that God had spoken to Moshe, and he did the signs before the eyes of the people. And the people believed, and they paid attention … (Exodus 4:30-31)

Things seem to be going according to God’s plan. Next Moshe and Aharon go to the pharaoh and request that the Israelites get three days off work to go into the wilderness and sacrifice to their God. The pharaoh doubles their work instead, requiring them to find their own straw while still making their daily quota of bricks. The Israelite foremen blame Moshe and Aharon, and Moshe asks God:

“My lord, why did you do harm to this people? Why did you send me? Since I came to Paroh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people; and you have certainly not rescued your people!” (Exodus 5:22-23)

Paroh (פַּּרְעֺה) =the title of the king of Egypt, “Pharaoh” in English. The portion Shemot ends with God saying the equivalent of “Just wait and see”.

Who memorizes the divine words?

The portion Va-eira then begins with God repeating what Moshe already learned on Mount Sinai. Then God says:

“Therefore, say to the Israelites: I am Y-H-V-H. I will bring you out from under the forced labor of Egypt, and I will rescue you from serving them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. And I will take you for myself as a people, and I will be for you as a God, and you will know that I am GOD, your God, who brings you out from under the forced labor of Egypt. And I will bring you to the land where I raised my hand [in an oath] to give to Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, and I will give it to you as a possession. I am Y-H-V-H.” (Exodus 6:6-8)

This is quite a speech to memorize and deliver, for a man who knows he is a poor speaker. But the next verse says:

Then Moshe spoke thus to the Israelites. But they did not listen to Moshe, due to shortness of spirit and due to hard servitude. (Exodus 6:9)

In the portion Shemot, Moshe refused to speak to the Israelites without Aharon as an interpreter. But here in Va-eira, Moshe simply tells the people what God said—with no speech defect, no difficulty with Hebrew, no hesitation over the words. Aharon is not mentioned.

Classic commentary does not try to explain this sudden change. But the change makes sense if a redactor has suddenly switched to a different version of the story. Modern source scholarship identifies the story of Moshe’s recruitment on the mountain in the portion Shemot with a non-P (non-priestly) tradition.² The version from the P tradition begins with Exodus 6:2, which is also the first verse of the portion Va-eira.

Clumsy lips

Right after the overworked Israelites ignore Moshe’s message, God orders Moshe to speak to the pharaoh. Moshe objects:

“Hey, the Israelites do not listen to me. Then how will Paroh listen to me? And I have foreskinned lips!” Then GOD spoke to Moshe and to Aharon, and commanded them regarding the Israelites and Paroh, king of Egypt—to bring out the Israelites from the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 6:12-13)

According to Richard Elliott Friedman, these two verses were added by a redactor.³ But why? Moshe and Aharon have already received God’s instructions. “Foreskinned lips” might indicate that Moshe’s problem as an orator is a speech defect, and the Israelites who were overworked and short of breath did not invest the energy to understand him. But there is no need to insert Moshe’s objection here, since he describes his lips that way again after an intermission giving Moshe and Aharon’s genealogy.

And GOD spoke to Moshe, saying: “I am GOD. Speak to Paroh, king of Egypt, everything that I speak to you.” And Moshe said before GOD: “Hey, I have foreskinned lips! So how will Paroh listen to me?” (Exodus 6:29-30)

Who speaks to the pharaoh?

In the P version of the story in the portion Va-eira, it appears that the whole conversation on Mount Sinai recorded in the portion Shemot never happened, because next God reacts to Moshe’s protest as if it were news, and tells Moshe the same solution God gave on Mount Sinai:

“See, I place you as a god to Paroh, and your brother Aharon will be your prophet. You yourself will speak everything that I command you, and your brother Aharon will speak to Paroh, and he will send out the Israelites from his land.” (Exodus 7:1-2)

Does this mean that from now on, God will speak to Moshe, Moshe will speak to Aharon, Aharon will speak to the pharaoh, and Moshe will initiate miracles with his staff—the same arrangement God decided on in the Mount Sinai version?

No.

First Moshe learns that God will harden the pharaoh’s heart after each miracle, so he will not let the Israelites go until God is ready to bring them out of Egypt. Then God gives instructions for a preliminary miracle:

“When Paroh speaks to you, saying: Give us a miracle for yourselves!—then you must say to Aharon: Take your staff and throw it down before Paroh; it will become a reptile.” (Exodus 7: 9)

Already Aharon is the brother wielding the staff.

The first miracle that affects the whole country is turning the water of the Nile River into blood. At God’s command, Moshe warns the pharaoh at length. Then Aharon strikes the surface of the river, and God turns the water into blood (Exodus 7:14-20).

Moses Speaks to Pharaoh, by James Tissot, ca. 1900

The next miracle, frogs, goes the same way, with Moshe speaking to Pharaoh, and Aharon wielding his staff (Exodus 7:26-8:2). Pharaoh summons both of them and promises to release the Israelites if they plead with their God to remove the frogs. With no prompting from God, Moshe asks Pharaoh to name the day of the frog removal, and adds that the death of the frogs on that exact day will prove God’s unique power (Exodus 8:5-7). For someone who claimed in the portion Shemot that he was “not a man of words”,⁴ he is thinking on his feet and speaking eloquently and confidently.

Moshe continues to be the one who speaks to Pharaoh throughout the rest of the portion Va-eira. Aharon stretches out his staff to initiate the miraculous plague of gnats or lice (Exodus 8:12-13), but Moshe holds out his staff to initiate the plague of hail (Exodus 9:22-23). Regardless of who wields his staff, Moshe does all the talking—and continues through the last three miracles—locusts, darkness, and death of the firstborn—in the following Torah portion, Bo.

Throughout the narrative of the ten miracles or plagues, non-P sources alternate with P sources, according to modern source scholars. But the redactor of this section of narrative stitches together the two versions of the story seamlessly, maintaining Moshe as the prophet who speaks directly to the pharaoh, and showing his increasing confidence and authority.⁵

But in the narrative section from Moshe’s call to prophecy on Mount Sinai (in the portion Shemot) to the miracle of turning water into blood (in the portion Va-eira), the redactor hops between sources without harmonizing them.

I wish the redactor had used more care. It is not that hard to redact; every week I write a lot about the weekly Torah portion or haftarah reading, then go back and select which paragraphs I will actually use for my blog post, often rearranging them in the process. If something I have written does not fit the theme, I remove it and save it for another post. If one paragraph seems to contradict the section before it, I add an explanation. And if I actually do contradict myself, I think about it and start over!

However, I am only redacting my own writing. What if I had the job of combining two earlier stories that I viewed as equally sacred? Perhaps the redactor of this part of the book of Exodus could not bear to eliminate either the narrative that views Moshe as unable or unwilling to speak, or the narrative in which Moshe speaks eloquently to the pharaoh.

What would I do, faced with that dilemma? I would include both—but rearrange the passages slightly, and write a little extra material, to show that Moshe is gradually learning how to speak and gaining confidence.

Although the current usage of “redact” usually focuses on making deletions from a piece of writing, biblical scholarship uses “redact” to mean selecting and arranging various pieces of writing to make a single document.
Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918), formulated a “documentary hypothesis” identifying different passages in the Pentateuch (Genesis through Deuteronomy) as coming from one of four sources: J, E, P, and D. Source scholarship today abounds with disagreements about non-P sources, as well as different theories for dating P and other sources. But the consensus is that the P (priestly) source is different from all other sources and is clearly identifiable.
Richard Elliott Friedman, the Bible with Sources Revealed, HarperCollins, New York, 2003, p. 128.
Exodus 4:10. See my post Shemot: Not a Man of Words.
See my post Shemot to Bo: Moses Finds his Voice.

Haftarat Shemot or Matot—Jeremiah: A Congenital Prophet

(In this post I refer to people by their Hebrew names first, but to books and places by their English names.)

The English word “prophet” means “1. one who utters divinely inspired revelations. … 2. one gifted with more than ordinary spiritual and moral insight. … 3. one who foretells future events: predictor.”¹

The Biblical Hebrew word navi (נָבִיא), routinely translated as “prophet”, means: 1. one who goes into a temporary altered state and experiences God.² 2. one who receives messages from God and communicates at least some of them to other people.³

Even the second kind of navi does not predict the future, but rather warns people about what God will do to them if they do not change their ways.⁴ Everyone in the Hebrew Bible who hears or reads one of these prophecies has a choice: to continue their behavior and eventually suffer the prescribed doom from God, or to stop doing the wrong things and avoid the doom.

Ironically, although the recipients of prophecies have free will (the ability to choose their own actions), the prophets themselves may not.

Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem, by Rembrandt, ca. 1630

A time for prophecy

Yirmeyahu (“Jeremiah” in English) seems to have no choice but to prophesy, whether he wants to or not. His dilemma is introduced in the haftarah reading Jeremiah 1:1-2:3, which goes with this week’s Torah portion, Shemot, according to the Sefardi tradition.⁵ The book of Jeremiah opens:

The words of Yirmeyahu, son of Chilkiyahu, one of the priests who were at Anatot in the territory of Benjamin. (Jeremiah 1:1)

Already we know that the father of Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) is a priest, perhaps even the high priest named Chilkiyahu during the reign of King Yoshiyahu (“Josiah” in English).⁶ Priesthood is hereditary in Ancient Israel, so Yermiyahu (Jeremiah) is born a priest. He is also born in the territory of Benjamin, close to Jerusalem, the capital city of the kingdom of Judah.

Before he reaches adulthood, he finds out that he is also a prophet.

The word of God happened to him in the days of Yoshiyahu son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirtieth year of his reign. (Jeremiah 1:2)

King Yoshiyahu (“Josiah” in English) ruled the kingdom of Judah from 640 to 608 B.C.E.—after the Assyrian Empire to the north had become weak and ceded some of northern kingdom of Israel to Judah, and before the new Babylonian empire had grown strong. According to 2 Kings 22 and 23, King Yoshiyahu crusaded to get rid of all the shrines and priests serving other gods.⁷

There is not much work for Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) until after King Yoshiyahu dies, since the main roles of a prophet during the time of the Israelite kingdoms are to challenge government policies and to shame or frighten rich citizens into reforming. But then Babylon’s power grows, and the kings of Judah make no changes in policy to address the threat. The word of God happens to Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) more often, and many of his prophesies warn that unless people return to the exclusive worship of God, and embrace God’s ethical rules, the Babylonians will conquer Judah and Jerusalem.

And it happened through the days of Yehoyakim son of Yoshiyahu, king of Judah, until the end of the eleventh year of Tzidekiyahu son of Yoshiyahu, until Jerusalem went into exile in the fifth month. (Jeremiah 1:3)

The reign of King Tzidekiyahu (“Zedekiah” in English) ended in 586 B.C.E. when the Babylonian army completed its conquest of Judah by destroying Jerusalem and exiling almost all of its remaining citizens to Babylon.

A congenital prophet

The narrative in this week’s haftarah then switches to the first person, and Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) speaks.

And the word of God happened to me, saying: “Before I formed you in the belly, I knew you; and before you went out of the womb, I set you apart as holy. A prophet to the nations I appointed you.” (Jeremiah 1:4-5)

What is God communicating here?

“Before I formed you in the belly, I knew you.” Psalm 139 is the only other biblical passage that says God gives human fetuses their physical form and some aspect of their personality:

For you yourself provided my conscience;

You wove me together in my mother’s womb. (Psalm 139:13)

Furthermore, in Psalm 139 God knows all human thoughts:

God, you have examined me and you know me.

You know [when] I sit down and stand up,

You discern my intention from afar. (Psalm 139:1-2)

The new claim in the book of Jeremiah is that God knows Yirmeyahu even before weaving him together in the womb. This might mean that God knows what certain individuals will be like in the future. Or it might mean that God creates someone’s personality even before creating that person’s body.

“And before you went out of the womb, I set you apart as holy.” This statement could mean merely that Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) was born into the priesthood, since priests are holy in the sense of being set apart for temple service and restricted regarding marriage and mourning.⁸ But it might also mean that God made him, in utero, even holier than a priest, even more set apart from normal life.

“A prophet to the nations I appointed you.” In the rest of the book of Jeremiah, the prophet addresses most of his prophecies to the citizens of Judah, although he does utter some prophecies about other nations.⁹ But the point in this verse is that before Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) was born, God determined how he would spend his entire adult life.

A right of refusal?

That raises the question of whether it is even possible for Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) to refuse to speak as a prophet. (Presumably he cannot help hearing, or otherwise experiencing, God.) Some modern commentators assert that he does have the power to refuse. For example, Plaut wrote:

“The call to Jeremiah may thus be seen to express both predetermination and freedom: the child was born with particular gifts and a high degree of religious sensitivity. But giving his life to a pursuit of the divine call—with all its rewards, difficulties and dangers—was a decision that Jeremiah had to make for himself.”¹⁰

After God’s opening salvo, Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) protests that he does not have the eloquence to be a prophet.

“Ah-ah, my lord God! Hey, I do not know how to speak, since I am a na-ar.” (Jeremiah 1:6)

na-ar(נַעַר) = boy or young man.

He says this, according to Malbim, because he lacks confidence, because he does not know how to speak well in front of a congregation, and because he is afraid people will kill him on account of his prophecies.¹¹

And God said to me: “Don’t you say ‘I am a na-ar’. For you will go wherever I send you, and you will speak whatever I command you.” (Jeremiah 1:7)

Midrash Tanchuma explains, ominously: “That is, against your will you will go, and against your will you will speak.”¹²

Indeed, later in the book Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) complains:

“… the word of God happens to me, for scorn and derision all day. So I thought: I will not mention him, and I will not speak any more in his name. But it [God’s word] happened in my mind like a burning fire shut up in my bones, and it exhausted me to hold it in, and I could not endure.” (Jeremiah 20:8-9)

By the prophet’s own testimony, he has no freedom of choice when it comes to prophecy.

A promise of rescue

After God tells Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) that he must go and speak at God’s command, God attempts to reassure him by saying:

“Don’t be afraid in front of them! For I am with you to rescue you.” (Jeremiah 1:8)

“To rescue you” could mean merely to rescue him if his speech stumbles. But God makes the real meaning clear before the interview is over:

“And hey, I appoint you this day as a fortified city, and as an iron pillar, and as bronze walls, against the whole land—against the kings of Judah, against its officers, against its priests, and against the people of the land. And they will battle against you, but they will not prevail over you, because I am with you,” declares God, “to rescue you!” (Jeremiah 1:18)

Later in the book, the prophecies of Yermiyahy (Jeremiah) are so unpopular that he needs to be rescued from various death threats.¹³ The worst is when he tries to leave Jerusalem on a business trip, and a guard at the gate accuses him of defecting to the Babylonians. City officials beat him, imprison him, and eventually convince King Tzediyahu to put him to death. Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) is lowered into a pit with no water, only mud. But before he dies of thirst and hunger, the king changes his mind and has him pulled up and returned to the regular prison. He remains there until the Babylonians capture Jerusalem.¹⁴ Then, while the city is burned down and its nobles are killed, the Babylonians remove him, give him food, and set him free.¹⁵

The characters in the Hebrew Bible have fewer choices than we do in today’s world, but almost all of them have free will, the ability to choose to do something different. We know this because the prophets who utter prophecies issue warnings about how people will suffer if they do not change their ways.

But do the prophets themselves have free will? It is hard to know, since even reluctant prophets like Moses come to accept their role in the world—except for Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah), who hates being a prophet so much that he wishes he had never been born. He declares:

“Accursed is the day that I was born! … Why did I ever go out from the womb to see trouble and grief, and to use up my days in shame!” (Jeremiah 20:14-20)

Today we have more choices than anyone in ancient Jerusalem, yet our range of choices is still limited by our starting point. A person is born into a family; events can change one’s upbringing as time goes on, but one’s first environment makes its mark. A person is born with predetermined genes; they can be turned on or off by events, but not replaced by different genes.¹⁶Some infants have congenital defects. Some, for all we know, might be congenital prophets.

Do we have more control over our own lives than Yirmeyahu? Or are we just less aware that someone or something is pulling the strings?

www.merriam-webster.com, 2025.
E.g. 1 Samuel 10:5-6 and 10-13.
E.g. Deutereonomy 34:10, 1 Samuel 3:20, etc. There are also false prophets, as in Deuteronomy 13:1-4.
Deuteronomy 18:22 is an exception to this rule; the book of Jonah is a prime example.
The haftarah reading Jeremiah 1:1-2:3 goes with the portion Matot in Numbers according to the Ashkenazi tradition.
2 Kings 22:4ff.
2 Kings 22:1-23:25.
Leviticus 21:1-15.
Jeremiah 9:25, 25:9–29, 27:3–11, and chapters 46–51.
W. Gunther Plaut, The Haftarah Commentary, UAHC Press, New York, 1996, p. 413.
Malbim is the acronym of Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Weisser (1809–1879).
Midrash Tanchuma, c.500–c.800 C.E., translation in www.sefaria.org.
Jeremiah 11:21-23, 26:8-11, 26:24, 36:26.
Jeremiah chapters 37-38.
Jeremiah 40:1-4.
At least not yet; gene splicing is still in its infancy.